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George Robertson. 



AN 



OUTLINE OF THE LIFE 



OF 



George Robertson, 

WRITTEN BY HIMSELF, 

WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND APPENDIX 

BY HIS SON. 



''And this {publication') I desire, not in the vain hope of posthumous 
Janie, but in the belief that it may be my best legacy to my descendants, 
useful to surviving friends, and of some service to my succeeding coun- 
trymen:'' — George Robertson. 

''Do you not ktiow how strictly we should guard the homes of the dead, 
since they cannot do it for themselves?'''' — Marlitt. 



LEXINGTON, KY.: 
TRANSYLVANIA PRINTING & PUBLISHING. CO. 

1876. 




t ■ pos^ 



L^ 4o 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1876, 

By GEORGE O. GRAVES, Administrator, 

In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. 



CONTENTS. 



InTRODVCTION, tj 

Parentage, Pioneer Life, 13 

Birth, School Days, Admission to the Bar, Marriage and 

Early Struggles, 23 

Incidents of Congressional Canvass and Life, 43 

In State Legislature, Appellate Judge, Contests for U. 

S. Senate and Constitutional Convention, 157 

Character and Habits, 70 

Memorials of his Wife and Children, 76 

Return to, and Abdication of, the Bench, 89 

His Views of This and a Future Life — Last Illiness and 

Death, 9:; 

Funeral Services, iii 

Appendix, 117 

Scenes of Early Life, 117 

Garrard County, 123 

His Patriotism, 129 

Love of Music, 132 

Domestic and Social Relations, 133 

General- Information, 141 

The Politician, 142 

The Lawyer, 149 

The Teacher of Law, 157 

The Judge, 160 

J. B. Robertson, iSo 

Notices of his Character, 1S4 

Extracts from his Writings, 192 

Errata, 210 



INTRODUCTION. 



The name of every member of society, certainly of every 
well-known man, is, at all times, impleaded before a tribunal, 
august, by reason of its power, the number of its judges 
and the gravity of its issues, for the most part honest, but 
fallible and irresponsible, whose laws are unwritten, whose 
jurisdiction is unlimited, whose proceedings are irregular, 
and which never adjourns; from whose decision there is 
no appeal, and from whose police there is no escape; 
which wields a might above the sway of Church and 
State, and grasps, not only the functions of a civil service — 
commission to try and to sentence every holder of a public 
trust, but also the authority of that God-appointed and pri- 
vate censor. Conscience, and that far-off hierarchy who sat 
in judgment of the dead. 

Its name is Public Opinion. 

These pages may be accepted as the final report, filed 
in that inevitable Court, of the manner in which he had 
discharged his obligations to his fellow-men, and his duties to 
himself, by one whose term of S2rvice upon earth was about 
to close. Putting yourself in his place, do you ask what 
good it will do you to be remembered with kindness, or, 
at all, after you are dead? The question is unamswerable. 
The wish to be so remembered, even if never fulfilled, may 
shape your course, and work out your welfare, here and 
hereafter, and if accomplished, may make your example 
of infinite value to others. 

The philosophy of practical life, which adapts means to 
ends, has vibrated between two great motives. The creed 
of a generation whose last survivors are fast passing away, 
may be summed up k\ the well known words: A good name 
is rather to be chosen than great riches. Its effect was to 
moor many a true and drifting soul to sure and steadfast 
rules, which had their outgrowth in plain manners and in 
the performance of every social duty. The substance ot 
the faith which now prevails, may be favorably condensed 
into the expression: Property is respectability, or the chief 
good is wealth. Would you see its fruits? Behold this 
age and land, matchless in the profusion and variety ot 



viii INTRODUCTION. 



their material advantages, but strewed with moral wrecks ! 

The low plane of the sensual offers few objects of pur- 
suit that are not within the reach of both wrong means 
and wrong subordinate motives and right ones. Its re- 
wards are also bribes ; its incentives to good are temptations 
to evil. The voyage of the Apostle and the cruise of the 
pirate are steered by the same star. The love of approba- 
tion may beget grovelling arts and counterfeit presentments. 
It is not the desire of praise, but the desire to be worthy of 
praise, that regenerates. A name to be good must be true. 
Public integrity must denote private virtue. The one is the 
flower, the other the root. 

This volume is the profile of a single life. Its author 
vv-as acquainted with the leading characters and the 
o-reat social and political movements of the progressive 
Times in which he lived, and especially with the controlling 
minds and the written and oral history of his native State. 
His familiar discourse was often enlivened b}- fresh and racy 
sketches of men and manners, which, if extended and writ- 
ten out, would be as entertaining and instructive as the 
diary of Evelyn, the memoirs of Barrington, or the full 
length portraits of Clarendon. But his purpose, in this pos- 
thumus publication, was not to give a retrospect of his own 
times. He knew that could not be done impartially and 
without offense until not only he, but all those whose 
motives or actions entitled them to notice, had passed for- 
ever from the scene. Without, as his words often, and his 
conduct always declared, valuing that widespread and indis- 
criminating notoriety which may be the offspring of a prosti- 
tuted press or party, or the bastard of accident, he did 
earnestly desire that the witnesses of his conduct in the 
various relations of life, and most of all, those who had con- 
fided private or public trusts into his hands, might be able to 
say with truth, if not with gratitude, after he had gone from 
among them. Well done, at all times and in every place, 
tried and faithful man! And with unshaken confidence in 
his own probity, if tested by the highest human standard. 
he left this memorial of his motives and his deeds, his sorrows 
and his joys, his weakness and his strength, with the hope 
that it might guide other travelers along the rugged, treach- 
erous and bewildering path which he had safely trod. In 
these last lines, dictated or approved when the shadow of 
coming oblivion was settling fast upon him, he speaks words 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. Ix 

of good cheer, now sealed by death, to young men, espe- 
cially those of humble birth and fortune — the class from 
which he sprung, and to which he ever extended an open 
hand. He shows that without being "pensioners on the 
dead," or parasites of the living, without advantages derived 
by descent or obtained by marriage, or by any of the wind- 
falls that irresolute Micawbers ingloriously await, strong will 
and lofty aims may reap harvests of their own sowing, and 
' ' repose beneath shades which they themselves have planted. " 
He points to his own sturdy and unaided growth to prove 
that lack of help may be the mother of self-reliance and the 
stern nurse of untried power, and adds one more example to 
the old lesson, so seldom learned until the recitation is ended 
and the refractory pupil about to be dismissed, — that the 
vicissitudes of life are the frosts and thaws of a disciplinary 
winter, intended to weed, mellow and strengthen the mind 
and heart, to produce plenteous and golden fruits. Unlike 
parvenues who disown their origin, he claims to be the shoot 
of an undistinguished but brave and honest stock, and quiet- 
ly takes the place which by sympathy, manners and associa- 
tion, he ever held among plain people of moderate means, 
pure morals and good sense. It was among such that he 
found his earliest, latest and most faithful friends. And he 
felt sure, if it conferred no merit, it was neither a reproach 
nor misfortune to be bred and trained in the ranks of the 
common people — that mighty infantry, without pennon or 
device, who, though often led astray and often betrayed, 
shattered and driven back when in the right course, had 
from the days of the unlineal Elijah the Tishbite, in every 
succeeding age, in every free country, and in every field of 
useful effort, wrought most of the memorable deeds and pro- 
duced most of the great names that have blessed mankind. 

He teaches that the only place at which to begin is the 
one which has been assigned us ; that the best place to attain 
may not be the one which wc most desire, or for which we 
are best suited, but that which is best fitted for us; that the 
best place at which to end is where, after having employed 
every talent, and performed every duty, with exhausted 
strength, and with harness on, we fall. He shows, inferen- 
tially, that great powers of action and endurance may find 
large scope for their exercise in any place ; that the hum- 
blest place may be exalted, and the i)roudest place de- 
graded, by its occupant; and that the skeleton of the guard 



INTRODUCTION. 



found standing at his post, near the gate of the disinterred 
city, still holding aloft the lantern, which lighted for all 
but' him the way of escape, tells the story of a grander 
place, because more grandly filled, than the imperial seat. 
Finally, he shows that no place upon the quicksands of 
Time can satisfy the infinite longings of a thoughtful soul. 
His career affords a cud for both the Pelagian and the 
predestinarian. He does not assert that he achieved any 
extraordinary share of that material and external advance- 
ment which human short-sightedness elevates as the 
only standard of success, but only claims to have received 
such returns of that kind as any one may reasonably 
expect in this world, of uncertain and unequal rewards, for 
doing his duty. He leaves the enigma of his own, and every 
other life in which the conflicting forces, free-will and neces- 
sity seem to co-exist, to be solved, if ever, in a state of 
being, where the evidence is clearer, or the discernment is 
more acute, than in this. If he rose above difficulties, sor- 
rows often rose above him ; and his history reveals that pure 
intentions, leading to good actions and amiable affections 
devoted to worthy and attractive objects, may not prevent, 
but may be the means of producing temporal afflictions more 
severe and lasting than those which commonly result from 
debased appetites, directed to selfish and ignoble ends. 

If this result of an upright life tends to prove that it is a 
failure, it creates a far stronger presumption, that it is unfin- 
ished and will find its complement hereafter. And, there- 
fore, every such example points, it may be, through mists 
and clouds, to this truth as the guiding star of human destiny. 
That the only measure of a man, which can stand the tests 
of time and change, is not the adumbrations which he casts 
before men, nor what he has, but what he must think of him- 
self when his thoughts and deeds are squared by the "shadow 
of God," which is the light within him. And that "wisdom, 
as it refers to action, lies in the proposal of a right end, and 
the choice of the most proper means to attain it; which end 
doth not refer to any one part of a man's life, but to the 
whole as taken together. And that, therefore, he only de- 
serves the name of a wise man, not who considers how to be 
rich and great when he is poor and mean, nor how to be 
well when he is sick, nor how to escape a present danger, 
nor how to compass a particular design, but he that considers 
the whole course of his life together and what is fit for him 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. Xl 

to make the end of it." A fit motto for this book would be: 
Act well your part; a fit moral or conclusion: Live for others. 
Reticence is not a fault of this narrative; blunders are ad- 
mitted and merit is claimed; disappointments and sorrows 
under domestic afflictions, which neither faith nor reason 
could assuage, are disclosed; incidents that might be trivial, 
if anything influencing character is so, are told. He tells of 
his hurried education, of the straightened circumstances 
{ang7ista irsdonii) of his early married life; of his addiction to 
cards, and his other shifts to earn and make money, and of his 
provincial rusticity, "By forms unfashioned, fresh from 
nature's hand," and want of savoir faiiv that led him, when 
a member of Congress, uninvited, to drink the wine of a 
Commodore. That there are no confessions, like some of 
Rousseau's, and many by De Retz, is because he was not 
a less candid, but a purer man than the erotic sentimentalist 
or the reckless Cardinal. 

Complete self-knowledge is impossible, and the author of 
these pages may have done himself more or less than justice. 
In the judgment of those who knew him best, his failings, 
like the bending of the stalk of well filled grain, were the re 
suit of his goodness. 

This autobiography was originally written by the author's 
own hand, and was more succinct and connected than now. 
During the last years of his life, when blind and helpless, he 
dictated many interpolations, some of which, perhaps, he 
would not have approved, had his health been vigorous. 
Whatever may be its faults, it contains no word of reproach, 
and the grave has closed the ear of him who was both its 
author, its subject, to the voice of censure and of praise, and 
to the dull, cold silence of indifference — facts that will be- 
speak for it a forbearance that might be less willingly con- 
ceded to a more aggressive work, or to the autobiography of 
a living man. Toward the matter which has been appended 
to the narrative, by one who had no other qualification for 
the task than long acquaintance with the author, may be 
supposed to confer, and under circumstances which rendered 
the task imperative, far greater indulgence is needed and 
besought. 

This book is only a meager outline. If a full and just 
biography of Judge Robertson should ever be written by a 
competent hand, it will show a heart almost incredibly pure 
and amiable; a will always earnest and active; a mind that 



xii INTRODUCTION. 

could not only master the most difficult subjects, but also 
capable of great and original thoughts, and able to organize 
Icnowledge; a citizen watchful of his country's interests, con- 
ceiving with the wide and prophetic vision of a statesman, 
speaking with the force of strong convictions, advocating and 
opposing with the fearlessness of a patriot; a jurist, who 
soared to a height above the dust and clamor of pie pondrc 
courts, and there combining reason with authority, reconciled 
the discordant, simplified the abstruse, crushed or separated 
the intractible, and erred, when he did err, in the endeavor 
to prevent general rules from sacrificing individuals; a man, 
who taking in, at one view, the end and purpose of the 
whole of life, tried to make his actions conform thereto. 

But the time has passed when the recognition or denial of 
his worth can concern him. His dust will mingle with the 
soil from which he sprung; his thoughts and the results 
which he achieved will soon be undistinguishably blended 
with the common knowledge. Those who reap their benefit 
will not know or acknowledge their source. Not a few of 
the best and greatest of men have died and left no sign. 
Earth is crowded with names kept alive by the fascinations of 
the style, or the beauty of the marble that enshrines them. 
Other men, like Johnson leaning on Boswell, as on a staff, 
and Socrates resting on the shoulders of Plato and of Xeno- 
phon, as on the pillars of Hercules, have also solid merits to 
sustain them. Others still, like Homer and Shakespeare, 
live only in their works. And this at last must be the fate 
of all; grani^ crumbles, triple brass corrodes, memorial tab- 
lets and inscriptions overlay and hide each other. Mortality 
is inexorable — its law is compensation, its decree is changt. 
Every life borrows the materials of its organization and the 
subjects of its forces, and must restore them to their source. 
Decay nourishes; the tiniest moss, the grandest tree, must 
pay back its elements to the soil and to the air, to become 
the food of other forms. The man must be lost in humanity 
— the individual in the race. Names must perish, works be- 
come common property; but only in this world. The action, 
like the actor, has an immortal soul. "I heard a voice 
from Heaven saying unto me, write, * * ^ TJieir zvorks 
ao follow thcin," 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



CHAPTER I. 

As my descendants may desire to know more of me than 
they might glean from tradition, I commence, this 1 8th ot 
November, 1858 — the 68th anniversary of my birth — to write, 
for their inspection, a memorial of my life. And, although 
Autobiography is too much tinged with egotism, yet I will 
strive to speak of myself as candidly as I ought to speak of 
any other person, with the eminent advantage of more accu- 
racy, fullness and authenticity in my own case, than in that 
of another. 

My genealogy has not been emblazoned by heraldry, nor 
illustrated by either statesmanship or arms; and I cannot 
trace my line of descent further upward, by regular links of 
concatenation, than to m>^ paternal and maternal stocks of 
great grand-parents. 

My father, Alexander Robertson, born in Augusta county, 
Vireinia, about a mile from Staunton, and northwestwardly 
of it, on the 22d of November, 1748, was the son of James 
Robertson, who, with his own father, of the same name, im- 
migrated, about the year 1737, to America from the neigh- 
borhood of Colerainc, in the north c^f Ireland. They were 
probably a portion of the colony of ScotchTrish Presbyte- 
rians, who settled on Burden's grant, in the then trans Alle- 
ghanian wilderness of the colony of Virginia, which had been, 
a few years before, visited by Lciuis and Sailing, the latter of 
whom was captured by Indians near the forks of James river, 
and taken, about the year 1725, to Kentucky as its first 
white visitants, so far as authentic tradition testifies. 

My mother's maiden name was Margaret Rob/;/son. Her 
father, William Robinson, was born early in the i8th cen- 
tury, in the county of Down, Northern Ireland, whence his 



14 LIFE OF JUDGE ROBERTSON. 

father, James Robinson, and himself and six brothers, all 
over six feet high, came about the year 1740 to Lancaster 
county, Pennsylvania. Not long after his advent he married 
Margaret Garrel, a pretty little fair-haired and blue-eyed 
Welch girl ; his own hair and eyes being dark brown. Short- 
ly after his marriage, he removed to the last crossing of 
K-oanoke, near Voss' Fort — then in the county of Fincastle, 
but when my mother was born the county of Bottetourt, and 
now^ the county of Montgomery, Virginia — and settled on 
an improved and large tract of land (called Fotheringay) 
which is as fertile and romantic as any in Western Virginia. 
He was considered one of the most upright, modest and 
handsome men of his day, and my mother's face was said to 
be a blooming likeness of his. 

My paternal grandfather was tall and spare, but of large 
frame. His skin was fair and his eyes blue. His piety was 
unquestioned, and his character unsoiled. He married, in 
Augusta, Elizabeth Crawford, a handsome girl, of good fam- 
ily. Of her genealogy I know nothing.* 

Thus, as early as about 1742, all my grand-parents resided 
in Western Virginia, then almost a trackless wilderness. 

The physique, the morale, and the orthography indicate 

*yudge Robertson wrote the subjoined noUce of his father's sister: — 
Rebecca Dunlap, mother of Rev. James Dunlap, the oldest citizen of 
Favette, died at the residence of her son. Col. John R. Dunlap, near Lex- 
ington, Kentucky, on the morning of the 7th of November, 1849, in the 
99th year of her age 

Born in Augusta county, \'irginia, on the i^A of July, 1751, she there 
intermarried with WilliamDunlap. In 17S4 they emigrated to Kentucky, 
and in 17S5 settled about four miles from Lexington, where she ever after 
resided until her death, within forty feet of the site of her first cabin. Iler 
husband, William Dunlap, died March 5th, 1816, aged 72 years, 4 months 
and J5 days. Her father, James Robertson, about the year 1735, came to 
America trom the north of Ireland, and in 1739 married Elizabeth Craw- 
ford, and settled about one mile from Stanton, then in the backwoods of 
X'irginia, where Rebecca, his sixth child, and the last survivor of his family, 
was born and reared, and where he died in her infancy about the year 
171^8. He was a plain upright man, of spotless character and exemplary 
piety, living and dying a steadfast Presbyterian. She also, at an early 
davafter her settlement in Kentucky, became a member of the Presbyte- 
rian church at Walnut Hill, of which church she continued a beloved and 
worthy member as long as she remained on earth, ller long and quiet 
life was an admirable model of the grace and humility of genuine Chris- 
tianity. 



LIFE OF JUDGE ROBERTSON. 1 5 

that my father's stock was Scotch, and my mother's English, 
of each of which shoots were transplanted, and probably 
about the same time, from Scotland and England to the 
north of Ireland. And this inference i.'* rather fortified by 
some va"ue traditions. 1 am also inclined to believe that 
Rob-^rtson, the historian, and my father were descendants of 
the same clan. This is nearly authenticated by a genealogi- 
cal table lately sent to me by Wyndham Robertson, of Rich- 
mond, Va. , which shows that my father was either a nephew 
or cousin of Robertson, the historian; and, therefore, as 
Patrick Henry's father was a nephew of Robertson, the his- 
torian, Patrick Henry and myself were of the same stock.* 

The descendants of m\' mother's stock are more numerous 
in the United States than those of my father; but of the 
identity or proximity of the individuals of either class, I have 
only a very partial knowledge. I i)resume that Genl. James 
Robertson, who settled Nashville, and Boiling Robertson, 
who represented Orleans in Congress, were, in some degree, 
related to my father, and the Reverend Stuart Robinson to 
my mother, t 

One of the purest and almost the last of Kentucky's pioneer band, she 
lived through three generations, and having outlived the cotemporaries of 
her children, and sighed over the graves of most of the fi lends of her me- 
ridian sunshine, she stood in her lingering and mellow eventide, a lonely 
monument of the simple graces and sturdy virtues of a race and age, 
memorable in the history of American progress and Western civilization 
She saw Kentucky in all its phases, from the twinkling light of its strug- 
gling dawn to the full radiance of its culminating glory. And when, after 
an eventful life of rare length and harmony, she had at last gradualh de- 
scended to the horizon of her probationary day, she sank Irom the visions 
of earth as serenely, as noiselesslv. and as benignantly, as the setting sun 
of a mild and cloudless autumnal evening. Blessed in her parting twilight 
with the consoling presence of a kindred household, and with the long 
hoped for privilege of dying at a heme consecrated by 64 years of buried 
jovs and untold sorrows, she took her eternal leave with a patriarch's 
blessing on the land she had helped to save and exalt, and with thanks to 
God for all that she had been permitted to see, to do, and to enjoy on 
earth. Such a life and such a death are worthy of long and grateful re- 
membrance, and especially by the countless posterity, left by this vener- 
able decedent, to act their parts "for weal or woe" in the trving drama in 
which the last scene of her long and useful pilgrimage is just closed for- 
ever. 

*Brougham was a nephew of the same, 

tSee S. B. 



1 6 LIFE OF JUDGE ROBERTSON. 



When he was about ten years old my father was left an 
orphan ; and inheriting but a small patrimony, he was bound 
to James Allin, grandfather of Mrs. Jouett, of Lexington, 
Ky., to learn the trade of a carpenter and wheelwright, on 
Middle river, in the county of his birth. He served a faith- 
ful apprenticeship, and obtained a good English education, 
consisting of reading, writing, arithmetic, trigonometry and 
surveying. I have in my possession a manuscript book con- 
taining some of his scholastic exercises in surveying, from 
which it appears that when a boy he had learned to write 
neath' and legibly, draw accurate diagrams, and soh'e diffi- 
cult problems. 

My mother was born April 13th, 1755, on Roanoke, at 
the ''Hancock Place," or Fotheringay, so named by her father 
in honor of Mary Queen of Scots, to whose cause he was a 
devoted adherent. In the tenth year of her age, her father 
was drowned in New river, at the crossing of the main west- 
ern road. The facilities for scholastic education being then 
very limited, she was at school only six months; but during 
that short pupilage she learned to read, write and cipher 
quite well. Children then, and in that country, were trained 
to moral and industrious principles and habits, and thus, kept 
from vicious temptations and demoralizing associations, they 
employed their time usefully, and soon acquired proper edu- 
cation, physical, moral and intellectual. It is to be regretted 
that it is not so now and here, in this more luxurious and 
degenerate age. 

Liberated from his apprenticeship, my father devoted him- 
self diligently to his trade of making wheels and building 
houses in his native county, until about the year 1770, when 
he engaged to build a framed house on Roanoke, for William 
Madison, father of George Madison, who was elected Gov- 
ernor of Kentucky, and brother of James Madison, father of 
President Madison. This house I have seen. It is west of 
the river, and in sight of the house of my grandmother Rob- 
inson, which was on a mountain elevation on the east of the 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. IJ 



river, and on the site of the brick house afterwards built by 
Hancock. While engaged in erecting that edifice my father 
became acquainted with and courted my mother, and on the 
iSth of August, 1773, they were married in Bedford county, 
Virginia, whither they and their bridal party had to go to 
meet the Episcopal minister, who Would not go out of his 
own county to solemnize marriage. They were married at 
the house of Colonel Howard, the father of Benjamin How- 
ard, once Governor of Missouri. I have a copy of their 
license, dated 17th August, 1773. And Mrs. Parker, a sister 
of Gov. Howard, said to me about ten years ago, "5//-, I saw 
your father and mot her married, and a handsomer eon pie I never 
saiv stand 0)1 tJic floor:' And doubtless she thought so. I 
have a vivid recollection of each of them. My mother, when 
in her girlhood, must have been beautiful, and, according to 
tradition, was generally considered almost peerless in per- 
sonal comeliness. My father, although only five feet eight 
inches high, weighed about 165 pounds, and was of perfect 
form His head was large, his forehead capacious, his nose 
of large Grecian mold, his complexion fair, his eyes grey, 
liis hair black and waving, and his countenance benignant 
and luminous. I was not quite twelve years old when he 
died. When he was forty years old, he had become so cor- 
pulent as to weigh 240 pounds. But even as I remember 
him he was remarkably handsome. My mother was of me- 
dium size, her eyes were dark hazel, her hair black, her com- 
plexion bright, her features symmetrical, her countenance 
mild and attractive, and altogether she was one of the hand- 
somest women of her day and generation. 

After their marriage my parents lived with my maternal 
grandmother about a year, when they removed to a farm 
purchased by my father in "Bunker's Bottom," on New 
river, about twenty miles above English's Ferr\-, where my 
grandfather was drowned. There they li\-ed until the fall of 
the year 1779, when, resolved to tr}' their fortune in the 
wilds of the "Dark and Bloody Ground," they started with a 



1 8 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

caravan of emigrants for Kentucky ; and, after extreme peril 
and privation, they arrived, on the 24th of December, at 
Gordon's Station, about four miles northeast of Harrodsburg. 
Detained for several weeks in Powell's Valley, huntine for 
horses lost by some of the company, they were overtaken by 
the ''hard winter,'' after which the impracticability of the 
wilderness "trace," and the memorable severity of the weather, 
prevented them from traveling more than from three to five 
miles a day. They were cordially welcomed by a large party 
of friends, among whom were Col. Stephen Trigg and Capt. 
John Gordon. But there was nothing but warm and hopeful 
hearts to cheer their advent. There was neither bread, nor 
milk, nor tea, nor corfee, nor salt, nor meat, except scanty 
and precarious supplies of the meat of poor buffaloes, so im- 
poverished by the winter as to be unable to get out of the 
hunter's way. Nevertheless the occasion was celebrated by 
dancing and festivity; but the only refreshment was a little 
parched corn. And I have hea'-d my mother say that she 
never .saw a convivial party apparently more happy. 

My parents brought with them their only children, all 
daughters — Elizabeth, Margaret, and Jane — the youngest 
then only two months old, brought in her mother's lap, and 
the others carried in baskets swung on a horse fastened to 
the tail of the mare ridden by their mother. The winter, 
memorable for the intensity and unremittedness of the cold, 
set in about two weeks before Christmas, and this they all 
ericountered without permanent injur}-. Col. Trigg and 
Capt. Gordon, intimate Virginian friends of my father and 
mother, having preceded them to Kentucky, induced them' 
to follow and come to their Station, called "Gordon's." Be- 
fore his removal, my father had bought from Gordon and 
paid him for 400 acres of land, including the Station, and 
contemplated it as his home. But Gordon's Station, continu- 
ing to be occupied, my father bought from Silas Harlan a 
tract of land called Harlan's Spring, and settled on it during 
the year 1780. Trigg, Gordon and Harlan all fell in the 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. I9 



Blue Lick defeat, August 19th, 1782 Gordon left an infant 
son his only heir, who could not convey a valid title to the 
Station tract. My father, not having seen the land when he 
bought it, had prudently reserved, in the written contract of 
sale, the privilege of taking some other of Gordon's various 
tracts of land, if, after inspection, he should prefer any other. 
He, however, was pleased with the Station tract, and brought 
a suit in Chancery against Gordon's heir for a title to it; but 
the Assistant Judges, Stirling and George Thompson, dis- 
missed his bill only because my father had not, before suit, 
made a formal selection of the tract he preferred ! Incredi- 
ble as this may be, and discreditable, as it certainly was, to 
the Court, it is certainly true. I have seen the record of the 
suit. And thus my father neither got the land he bought, 
nor any compensation whatever. 

During the "hard winter" my parents lived in an open 
cabin, without a chimney, and which had been built for a 
smoke-house. The cold was so severe as to prevent either 
chinking the cracks or adding any chimney. I have heard 
my mother say that her frozen breath often made the hairs 
on her head stand out as so many icicles, and that the mild- 
est day during that winter was, to her feelings, the coldest 
she ever felt before or since. And I have heard her also say 
that their only food was green buffalo meat, without bread or 
salt. IMevertheless they enjoyed good health, and were 
happy with the prospect before them. 

The spring, near which my father built cabins and settled 
in 17S0, was among the largest and best in Kentucky. It is 
one of the chief fountains of ''Cane Run,'' and is near the 
road leading from Harrodsburg to McCoy's Mill, on Dix 
river, and about two hundred yards from the road from Lex- 
ington to Danville, b}' the mouth of Dix river. 

In 1782 my father built a framed house near his cabins. 
In that house, yet standing, he died and I was born. It was 
a common plank house, with two brick chimneys, and three 
rooms on the first floor, and two porches. It was, when 



20 LIFE OF GEORGE ROPERTSON. 



built, the finest house in Kentucky. His homestead tract 
contained nearly i.ooo acres, of which he cleared and culti- 
vated about 200 acres. His farm was beautifully situated, 
and he was a neat and thrifty farmer. Modest and unambi- 
tious, he neither sought nor desired public position or em- 
ployment. But hi-^ exemplary walk and innate integrity and 
amenity made him a general favorite, and drew him reluc- 
tantl)- into public life. He was a member of the first County 
Court of Lincoln, afterwards Mercer county. He was elected 
a delegate to the Virginia Convention of '88, called to ratify 
the Federal Constitution, and also a member of the Virginia 
Legislature succeeding the session of the Convention. In 
those services he was kept from home until about the middle 
of February, 1789. He voted, with Patrick Henry and all 
the Kentucky delegates, except Humphrey Marshall, against 
the adoption of the Constitution. With my present light I 
would have voted for the ratification, which was carried by 
the small majority of only eight votes. In 1592 my father 
was elected the first Sheriff of Mercer; and this was .the last 
place of public trust he ever held. He died of pneumonia, 
August 15th, 1S02, when he was not quite 54 years old. I 
was then nearly twelve years old, and have even now a vivid 
recollection of him. He died unexpectedly and intestate. 
My mother administered on his personal estate, and remained 
a widow until the fall of the year 1805, when she was mar- 
ried to Job Johnson, of Garrard, a ^Methodist, honorable and 
amiable, but considerably inferior to her in intellect and 
knowledge. She survived her last husband about twenty 
years. During her last widowhood she lived with her fourth 
daughter, Mrs. Martha McKee, Avidow of Col. Samuel Mc- 
Kee, and mother of Col. William Robertson McKee, who 
fell at the battle of Buena Vista, 23d February, 1847. Her 
residence adjoined Lancaster. Crushed by the death of her 
noble son, she survived him only about a year. My mother 
having, in the spring of the year 1846, gone to Frankfort on 
a visit to her voungest daughter, Mrs. Charlotte Le her, 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 21 



wife of ex Gov. Letcher, there accidentally broke a limb near 
the hip joint, and was confined to her bed until the 13th of 
June, 1846, when she died of that fracture, in the g2d year 
of her age, and was buried in the Frankfort cemetery. She 
retained her mental faculties to the last, and was as colloquial 
and edifying the day of her death as she had ever been. 
Her mind was strong and logical, and her memory was accu- 
rate and vivid ; and in the last scene of her long earthly 
drama she could recite poetr\' b\' the hour. Her native ca- 
pacity was far above mediocrity, and she was the best living 
chronicler of the early history of Kentucky I had ever seen. 
She was the mentor and almost the idol of a large posterity. 
She was a favorite wherever she was known, and by all who 
knew her she was considered a woman of exemplary piety 
and extraordinary moral harmony and power. She was a 
member of the Methodist church, and left the scenes of earth 
with placid resignation and cheerful triumph, her mind full- 
orbed and unobscured. Her whole life and character prop- 
erly considered, s/ir was a }iiodcl looman."'^ 

My father and mother had ten children, five of each sex. 
Two of the males died in infancy. My sister Charlotte and 

*Ti"Jg6 Robertson, in his address on the first settlement- ,-t' Kentucky, 
speaks to his mother in the Ibllowing words: 

" But among you here is one — the lonely trunk of four generations — to 
whom the heart of filial gratitude and love must speak out one emotion to- 
day. Venerable and beloved MOTHER! How often have we heard 
from vour maternal lips the story of Kentucky's romantic birth — of "the 
hard \vintrr of "79"' — of all the achievements and horrors of those soul- 
rending days! 

'• You have known this land in all its phases. You have suftered with 
those that sulTered most, and sympathized with those who have rejoiced 
in well-doing and the prospect h)elbre them. You have long survived the 
husband, who came v\ ith you and stood by you in your gloomiest, as well 
as your brightest days, and has long slept with buried children of your 
love. And now, the sole survivor of a large circle of contemporaneous 
kindred and juvenile friends — a solitary stock of three hundred shoots — 
with a mind scarcely impaired, you yet linger with us on earth only to thank 
Providence for his bounties and pray tor the prosperity of your flock and 
the Avelfare of the land you helped to save and to bless. And when it 
shall, at last, be your lot to exchange this Canaan below for the better 
Canaan above, inav you. on the great day of days, at 'he head of your long 
line of posterity, and in tlic presence of the assembled universe, be able, 



22 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

myself alone survive — she the youngest and I the next 

youngest of the ten children. 

with holy jov, to announce the glad tidings — 'Here, Lord, are we and all 
the children thcu hast ever given us.' " 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 23 



CHAPTER II. 

I was born in Mercer county,"-^ Ky., on the i8th of No- 
vember, 1 790. I was named after my father's elder brother, 
George, who was a tall, spare, blue-eyed man, more like 
Gen'l John Adair than I ever saw one man like another. 
The first incident in my early life, which I remember, is my 
being dressed in calico slips with yellow ground and brown 
diamonds, when I was not more than two years old; and my 
recollection of that dress is yet so distinct as to enable me to 
identify the calico if it could be now seen. The next event 
in mv youthful davs, now distinctly remembered by me, is 
rather ludicrous, though very near being tragical. It oc- 
curred in the fall of the year 1793, when I was about three 
years old. Among other things, bacon and cabbage had 
been boiled in a large pot for dinner. The kitchen was 
about forty feet from the dwelling house. My mother, 
whom I had followed into the kitchen, having assisted the 
cook in serving up the dinner, had left me alone, standing 
near the pot nearly full of boiling "pot-liquor," and just as 
she had reached the vestibule of the mansion, a large dog, 
rushing to the pot, threw me into it. My mother, hearing 
the plunge, ran back in time to save me, which she could 
not have d^ne had I not been clad in thick woollen cbth. 
But ne\-ertheless I was so much scalded as to leave an indel- 
lible scar on my back. I also remember that sometime in 
the spring of 1794 breeches were first put on me; and I shall 
never forget that, preparatory to going to bed, my mother 
having directed a servant to pull off my pantaloons, my pride 
revolted with the instinct that he who was man enough to 
wear breeches, ought to have manhood enough to put them 
on and take them off, without assistance; and that, in my 
solitary effort to undress I became so hobbled as to fall in 
*See Appendix A. 



24 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



the fire, whereby a wound was made on my forehead, which 
is yet visible. These facts may not be universally accredited, 
yet they are chronologically and substantially true 

I was not sent to school until I was seven years old, and I 
tiien for the first time learned the English alphabet. I was 
considered ugly and irascible. My passions were inordinate 
and rather eruptive. But I was never wild nor untoward, 
nor fond of juxenile sports. I was incliiied, always, to be sol- 
itar}', contemplative and taciturn. I was pleased with study, 
learned rapidh' at school, was generally at the head of my 
class, and never was ^hastised or rebuked with censure or 
frown by any one of various preceptors. I was, from my 
early boyhood, peculiarly susceptible of the tender passions. 
At e\*ery school I ever attended I was in love. And it is 
rather singular that each of my dulcineas was named Sally — 
Sally McGinnis, Sully Haggin and Sally Fry. 

My tuition in primary schools was continued until Jul)-, 
1804, during which time I had acquired a good elementary 
education in all the Ens^lish branches then taught in such 
schools, includinGT Eni:['lish <jrammar, which I had learned 
with a peculiar advantage. 

On the 4th of August, 1804, my mother sent me to Joshua 
Fry to learn Latin, French and Geography, which, with 
'other branches, he was then teaching on his farm, five miles 
west of Danville, Ky , once owned and occupied by George 
Nicholas. He kept a large boarding-school, composed of 
the elite of both sexes. When I went his classes were all in 
advance of where I was to begin ; and therefore he could not 
take me in unless, witli the tutelage of his son, Dr. John Fry, 
then in his family, I could soon overtake his junior class in 
Latin, which had been in progress about eight months. 
Hopeless of any such achievement, I would have returned 
home, had not ^ome of those who had been associated with 
me at the other schools, assured me and made a pledge to 
Mr. Fry that I would overtake the class in three months. 
On that assurance I commenced in the first Latin Grammar 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. ' 25 



I had ever seen. Understanding the Enghsh Grammar very 
Avell, I had but Httle difficulty in committing the Latin, which 
I accompHshed in five days. On the seventh day I was 
reading the colloquies of Corderhis, and after reading also 
Eiitropius and Cornelius Xvpos, I was, at the end of two 
•" months, advanced to the class in Cajsar, who had then been 
ten months at the Latin. When I joined them they were at 
the Bridi^e across the Rhine. For three v/eeks I had much 
difificulty in keeping up. But after that probation I could 
progress with them by studying not more than half my time, 
to employ more of which I studied also Geography and 
French; and; at the end of thirteen months from the time I 
commenced the Latin, I had a good knowledge of geogra- 
phy, and could read Latin and French almost as well as 
English. Thus rapid progress was the result of intense ap- 
plication, facilitated by severe mental discipline and a sort of 
mnemonics, which I had excogitated and practiced some time 
before. But an habitual concentration, and a peculiar loca- 
tion and association of objects — in acquisitiveness, though 
not in retentiveness — had become extraordinar)% and in a 
good degree, mechanical. By three or four readings I could 
commit almost anything I read. But my memory would 
soon lose it. As an illustration of this singular fact I state 
that the morning before the day of a commencement at 
Transylvania, I was requested b}- the Academic faculty, for a 
reason I need not mention, to commit for my speech, in lieu 
of one I had prepared, Major Jackson's eulogy on Washing- 
ton, occupying about twenty octavo pages in print. I did 
it, and the next day delivered it verbatim, without a baulk or 
uneasy pause. But a week afterwards I could not have re- 
cited it without reading it over again. It was thus that I 
passed Ruddiman's Latin Grammar in five days, and it was 
partly thus, but chiefly by instructive docility and intense 
and persevering study, I learned Latin, French and Geogra- 
phy, all well, in thirteen months. I derived much more than 
ordinary aid also from my preceptor, who, as far as he at- 



26 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



tempted to teach, was the best tutor I ex'er knew. He 
taught ideas more than words — things rather than names. 
He illustrated the rationale, and impressed on the pupil's 
mind the principles of whatever he read ; and he required 
him to repeat a recitation until he understood it thoroughly. 
His discipline also was rational and wholesome. After reci- 
tation the pupil was free to go where he preferred to go, and 
to study where and as he chose ; and in genial seasons he 
rambled over and studied in the groves. All that was re- 
quired was that he should act prudently and know his lessons 
when called to recite. The mode of living was also conge- 
nial with, and essentially promotive of, physical health and 
mental vigor and alacrity. The males slept on straw-beds, 
ate for breakfast and supper nothing but bread and milk, in 
a peripatetic style, without table or chair ; washed before 
dawn, winter and summer, at a large spring, two hundred 
yards from the house; and recited early in the morning my 
Latin class, reciting by candle-light in the winter. But the 
exercise of dancing every evening was still better for both 
mind and body. There were about twenty girls, all nearly 
grown, and about thirty boys, of whom I was among the 
youngest. Three daughters of George Nicholas, Ann Gist 
(step-daughter of Gen'l Charles Scott), Nancy Birney, Nancy 
Warren, and Lucy, Martha and Sally Fry, were among the 
female pupils; and R. P. Letcher, John B. Bibb, Samuel 
and Nicholas Casey, John Speed Smith, John C. and Charles 
W. Short, and David C. Cowan, were among the males. 
Every secular evening we were called into a large saloon to 
dance, under the presidency of Mr. and Mrs. Fry, and con- 
tinued to dance until they retired, when we instantly ad- 
journed. Thomas W. Fry, negro Phil, and myself, were the 
musicians. When I was only ten years old, I had learned to 
play on the violin well enough to be engaged as chief fiddler 
at dancing parties, and in my early manhood performed on 
the violin exceedingly well.* I look back at the season of 

*See Note C. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 2/ 

my pupilage under Mr. Fry, as the happiest as well as the 
most eventful portion of my life. Having completed my| 
course with him about the middle of September, 1805, I 
went, about the is<- of November following, to Transylvania 
University, and boarded on Hill street with old Mr. Samuel 
Price, who lived in a large stone house, on the site oi Mr. ' 

John G. Allen's present domicil. M)' messmates were Rob- 
ert P. Letcher, Robert P. Henry, Alexander Montgomery, 
Alexander M. Edmiston, Anthony W. Rollins, Robert A. 
Sturges, Joseph Weisiger, Thomas Washington, Andrew ,, J\j- 

McMillan, John \V. Hovey, and Denbril — all of whom, 

except McMillan, Bibb, and Weisiger, are now (ist August, 
1868,) dead. Most of them became distinguished meli. 
Montgomery, Edmiston, W^eisiger, Rollins, and McMillan, 
became physicians, and most of them were eminent in their 
profession. Montgomery settled in Frankfort, and fell in 
the massacre at Raisin, 23d Januar\-, 18 13. Edmiston set- 
tled in Lancaster, Garrard count}-, K\-., was my famih^ P^iy- 
sician, and died there July 2d, 18 12 Rollins settled in 
Richmond, Ky. , and about the }'ear 1830 removed to Boone 
count}', Missouri, where, some }-ears afterwards, he died. 
He was the father of James S. Rollins, now of that count}'. 
Robert P. Henr}' was a son of Gen'l Henry, of Scott county, 
Ky., became a distinguished la\\'}'er and member of Congress 
from the Christian District, and died about the year 1827. 
Augustus Henry, of Clarksville, Tennessee, was one of his 
brothers. Sturges was also a la\\\-er, and settled in Rich 
mond, Ky.. where he died about the year 1827. Weisiger 
was a son of Daniel Weisiger, who built and for many }-ears 
kept the "Weisiger House" in Frankfort. Dr. W. practiced 
his profession successively at Danville, Ky., and now resides 
in Texas. John Speed Smith practiced law, was a graceful 
speaker, succeeded me in Congress in 1821, lived in Rich- 
mond, Ky. , and died in that neighborhood about the }-ear 
1852. Robert P Letcher was also a successful la\\}-er, set- 
tled in Lancaster, K}-., beat and succeeded Smith in 1823, 



28 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



continued in Congress until 1835, was elected Governor of 
Kentucky in 1840, was appointed Minister to Mexico by 
Gen'l Taylor in 1849, ^'""^ ^^^^ '^"^ Frankfort in 1861. Wash- 
ington was a lawyer of high character at Nashville, Tenn. 
McMillan practiced medicine, with success, many years in 
Harrison county, Ky., and now lives in retirement in the 
suburbs of Lexington. Hovey and Denbril never studied a 
profession, and died many years ago in St. Louis, where they 
were born. Of all our mess Weisiger and myself were the 
youngest. 

Mr. Price had five grown daughters, and two beautiful 
daughters of his son-in-law, Gen'l William Russell, staid a 
large portion of their time at his house. Such a social nu- 
cleus of promising young females and males attracted to our 
house, very often, the elite of the young of both sexes of 
Lexington and the neighborhood, and we all had joyous 
times. Often we danced, I being general fiddler^''' and some- 
time'^ the fiddling and dancing were by moonlight on the 
velvet lawn in front of the house. I often revert to that 
period also as among the brightest and most pregnant of my 

hfe. 

I remained at Transylvania until the fall of 1806, without 
graduating. I would have been entitled to a diploma had I 
staid five months longer, which I was importunately urged 
to do by the faculty. But I had a puerile ambition to win 
honors at Princeton, whither my friends had promised to 
send me. But they failed to raise the means, and with my 
departure from Transylvania my collegiate course ended. 

My mother and sisters having removed to Garrard, I went 
to Lancasterf in the autumn of 1806, and, soon finding that 
I could not go to Princeton, I attended the Academy at Lan- 
caster, as a pupil of the Rev, Samuel Findley, a Presbyterian 
preacher and President of that institution, then extensively 
patronized. I continued that pupilage until the spring of the 

*See Appendix D. 

+See Appendix B. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 2g 



year 1807, Avlien I was appointed assistant teacher, in wliich 
situation I continued until the close of that year. The win- 
ter of 1808 I devoted to historical and miscellaneous reading. 
In April, 1808, I went to Frankfort to read law with Gen'I 
Martin D. Hardin; but not being able to engage eligible 
boardino-, I returned to Lancaster, and there studied law in 
the family of my brother-in-law, Samuel McKee. who was 
then a member of Congress. My studies were solitary and 
unassisted by the instruction or examination of any pre- 
ceptor. Frequent conversations with Chief-Justice Boyle, 
then living near Lancaster, were serviceable to me; and this 
was the chief assistance I had in my probationary studies. 
In September, 1809, Chief-Justice Boyle, after a thorough 
examination, signed mv license. The signature of another 
Appellate Judge being necessary, I went to Judge Wallace,] 
of Woodford, who was one of Boyle's associates. The acci- 
dental lameness of my horse prevented me from reaching his 
house until Sunday morning. He was a Presbyterian. His 
family were at breakfast when I arrived and handed him an 
introductory letter from Judge Boyle, explaining my object. 
Without inviting me to eat or sit down, Judge Wallace, with 
morose countenance, reprimanded me for a visit so inoppor- 
tune on secular business, in desecration of the Sabbath. 
Almost petrified, in such a presence, by such rebuke, I stood 
like a statue. Mrs. Wallace, compassionating my condition, 
tried to relieve me. She urged me to eat and to go with the 
family to church both of which invitations I declined. The 
September Term of the Garrard Circuit Court .vas to com- 
mence the next day, and I desired theri and there to make 
my debut by an address to the grand jury. I therefore re- 
solved to return at once without Judge Wallace's endorse- 
ment. The family started to church, leaving me in the )'r.rd, 
and my horse unfed at the fence. Judge Wallace, after put- 
ting a foot in his stirrup, returned, and walking past me to 
his office in quest of an overcoat (as /u^ said), said to me as 
he was passing me, " IV/inrs vow licensed' I handed it to 



30 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

him, and, after going again to his office, he handed it back 
to me folded up, and, without uttering a word, passed on to 
his horse and rode off, leaving me alone. I instantly opened 
the paper and found his signature ! I then thought that in 
certifying, as he did, that he had carefully examined me and 
found me well qualified, when he had refused to ask one 
question on law, he had committed a greater blunder than he 
could have done by first examining me on the Sabbath. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 3 I 



CHAPTER III. 

When I was licensed to practice law I was not quite nine- 
teen years old ; and I was certainly crud ^ and immature as a 
lawyer. But feeling a strong desire to assume the responsi- 
bilities and act on the arena of manhood, I determined to 
anticipate the growth of a few years, and try my fortune, 
however premature and perilous my lonely start. I had 
become acquainted with and engaged to marry my present 
wife, Eleanor James Bainbridge, a daughter of Dr. Peter 
Bainbridge, of Lancaster (who was a cousin of Commodore 
Bainbridge), and of Eleanor James Mcintosh, the only 
daughter of Gen'l Alexander Mcintosh, a wealthy planter of 
South Carolina. My wife had no patrimony, not a dollar. 
But she was very beautiful. My father's estate was ample 
enough to have made all his children rich ; but the most of 
it had been lost by neglect and improvidence before I was 
old enough to attend to it. I had received none of it. And 
although my brothers and sisters, older than myself, had 
distributed among themselves considerable portions of it, and 
owed me as much as would have made me comfortable and 
independent, yet I ^\'as too proud to ask for, and they were 
too tenacious to offer me, anything. All I ever received of 
my father's estate was a horse and an old negro woman, 
while my oldest brother, although my father died intestate, 
received the homestead farm of about 750 acres, and some 
other property. 

Yet, thus juvenile, poor, and proud, I ventured not only 
on the rather hopeless prospects of professional life, but, on 
the 28th of November, 1809, when I was only ten days over 
nineteen years of age, I ventured on the far more momentous 
contingencies of marriage, and, linking my destinies with a 
wife onlv fifteen vears and seven months old, we embarked. 



32 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

without freight or pilotage, on the untried sea of early mar- 
triage. I had never made a cent, and had nothing but ordi 
nary clothes, a horse, an old servant, a few books, and the 
humble talents with which God had blessed me. I borrowed 
thirteen dollars as an outfit, and out of that fund I paid for 
my license and handed to ijiy groomsman, R. P. Letcher, 
five dollars for paying the parson, Randolph Hall, father of 
Rev. Nathan H. Hall. Some davs afterwards Letcher rather 
slyly put into my hand a dollar, suggesting that ht had saved 
that much for me by paying the preacher onl}' four dollars. 
This looked to me as such minute parsimony as to excite my 
indignation, important as was only one dollar then to me. 
And I manifested that feeling in a manner both emphatic 
and censorious; to which Letcher replied that four dollars 
was more than was then customary, and that Mr. Hall, when 
he received it, expressed the warmest gratitude, and said that, 
old as he was, he had never recei\xd so large a fee for sol- 
emnizing the matrimonial rite ! This reconciled mt to the 
return of the dollar. 

My wife and myself lived with her mother until the 9th of 
September, 18 10, when we set up for ourselves in a small 
buckeye house with only two rooms, built and first occupied 
^y J'-'dge Boyle, and respecting which I may here suggest 
this remarkable coincidence of successive events: — That Boyle 
commenced housekeeping in that house, and, while he occu- 
pied it, was elected to Congress; that Samuel McKee com- 
menced housekeeping in the same house, and succeeded 
Boyle in Congress ; that I commenced housekeeping in the 
same house, and succeeded McKee in Congress; and that R. 
P. Letcher commenced housekeeping in the same house, and. 
after an interval of two years, succeeded me in Congress. I 
was unable to furnish it with a carpet, and our only furniture 
consisted of two beds, one table, one bureau, six split-bot- 
tomed chairs, and a small supply of table and kitchen furni- 
ture, which I bought with a small gold watch. I had bought 
a bag of flour, a bag of corn meal, a half barrel of salt, and 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 33 



two hams and two middlings of bacon ; and these, together 
with the milk of a small cow given to my wife by her mother, 
and a few chickens and some butter, constituted our entire 
outfit of provisions. But all our supplies were stolen the 
night we commenced housekeeping. This was, at that time, 
a heavy blow. I had no money; and, though I had good 
credit, I resolved not to buy anything on credit. And that 
was one of the best resolutions I ever made. It stimulated 
my industry and economy, and soon secured to me peace 
and a comfortable sense of independence. In adhering to 
my privative, but conservative resolve, I often cut and car- 
ried on m>- shoulders wood from a neighboring forest. For 
two years I did but little business in my profession. I was 
not only too young and crude to expect much, but I was too 
proud to seek it and too diffident to manage it in Court with- 
out agonizing trepidation. If I expected to make an argu- 
ment, I could scarcely eat or sleep for days preceding the 
appointed time. And I am satisfied that, had I not been a 
husband lashed on by necessity, I never would have prac- 
ticed the law for a livelihood. My experience has convinced 
me that, to assure eminence in that profession, both ''poverty 
and parts' are indispensable; and I believe that my poverty 
did quite as much for me as my parts. In addition to these 
drawbacks, Mr Gallatin, Secretary of the Treasury of the 
United States, offered me the appointment of Register of 
the Land Office, which the General Government contem- 
plated establishing at St. Louis, for the first sales of public 
lands in Missouri. Pleased with the prospects of such a 
position, I expected to remove to St. Louis during the year 
i8ii. But the prospect of a war with England, deferred, 
from time to time, the opening of the office; and, apprehen- 
sive that it would not be opened soon enough for my exigen- 
cies, I determined, in the winter of 1812, to renounce the 
prospective appointment, and rely altogether on my profes- 
sion, on which all reliance had been temporarily suspended 
by m\' temporar)' purpose of removal and dex'otion to a 



24 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



different avocation. When necessity impelled me to that 
resolution, although I had never thought Lancaster the most 
eligible location, nor intended to make it my permanent resi- 
dence, I was too poor to remove from my kindred and the 
friends of my youth; and therefore I resolved to try my 
fortune there. The Garrard Bar was then very able. Mc- 
Kee, Owsley, and R. P. Letcher, were among its resident 
members; and John Green, Thomas Montgomery, Paul L 
Booker, George Walker, Samuel H. Woodson, and occasion- 
ally John Rowan and James Haggin, were among its non- 
residents. 

Had I gone to St. Louis, under the promised auspices, I 
think it probable that I would have become one of the rich- 
est men in America ; for, although that town was then a 
small village, yet I had such prophetic vision of its destiny 
as to make me resolve, in the event of going there, to apply 
every dollar I could spare to the purchase of land and lots, 
and to hold on to the property as long as the city might 
grow. But I am well satisfied with my reluctant choice. I 
have always lived comfortably and independent, and have 
■Ecquired not only a rational competency of estate, but as 
much honest fame as I desired or could have earned in Mis- 
souri. I never craved more of property than enough to 
secure to me and mine independence; and, with prudent 
hmitation of our wants, a comfortable mediocrity will be as 
much as needful. He that cannot be contented with this 
would be less tranquil with more, because his appetite is 
morbid and becomes more voracious the more it feeds on. 
Nor did I ever seek for fortune to transmit to my children. 
Hereditary fortune is oftener a curse than a blessing to its 
recipients. The best and only reliable capital to start the 
business of Hfe on, is good education, moral and physical as 
well as intellectual, and domestic as well as academic. A 
young man thus armed will be almost sure to cut his way, 
and make and save fortune enough. But one without such 
panoply would scarcely ever make his own, or take care of 
patrimonial fortune. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



35 



How I sustained my family until the year 1812 I cannot 
well explain. Often how, without going in debt, which I 
would not do, I would be able to procure some necessary 
supply, 1 could not foresee; but always, at the proper time, 
Providence provided the means and pointed out the way; 
and I lived well and happily. And here candor requires that 
I should state that I indulged, more from necessity than 
taste, some associations and habits, the memory of \vhich, 
even yet, subjects me to self humiliation. Most of my asso- 
ciates frequently spent considerable portions of their time in 
various games of cards. Not having much business to do, I 
often played with them, sometimes for amusement, but gen- 
erally for money, honorably to be won or lost by fair play and 
skill alone. I soon acquired extraordinary skill, and, with 
reasonable luck, I was considered invincible by fair means. 
I never employed any other means, and had, by observation 
and association at the card table, become so thoroughly ac- 
quainted with human nature in all its multiform phases, as 
to be able to prevent my adversaries from the successful 
employment of dishonorable artifice or other false means. 
While I was in the habit of playing, I do not remember that, 
in any one instance, I ever lost anything. Our games were] 
generally loo and whist, and the betting was on a moderate 
scale. I almost always won from five to fifty dollars — some- 
times more than fifty, not often less than five dollars. I 
have alluded to this occasional deflection in my early life to 
explain how, for tlie first three years of my marriage, I' 
maintained my family without going in debt. But wliHc 
I regret the aberration on account of its pestilent example, I 
feel no other cause for self-reproach. I never cheated, or 
dissembled, or did any other act dishonorable or reprehensi- 
ble in all my card playing; and it not only kept me from 
starvation or servile dependence, but made me practically 
acquainted with the wiles and ways of men, to an extent 
which I could not otherwise have attained. 

In 1 8 12, having abandoned my Missouri purpose, and de- 



36 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



termined to rely on my profession alone, and not being able 
to remove from Lancaster,* where I had neither expected 
nor desired to remain long, I accepted from the Circuit Judge 
(Kelly), the office of Prosecuting Attorney for Garrard, and, 
devoting myself sedulously to the law, I soon received en- 
couraging patronage, and was cheered with assuring proph- 
ecies of success. I did succeed. And it was not long before 
I was engaged in nearly all the litigated causes near me, 
without ever soliciting employment. I never encouraged a 
litigous spirit, often induced antagonist parties to compro- 
mise, and oftener induced forbearance in frivolous and vin- 
dictive cases, in \\hich the least professional countenance 
would have bred vexatious litigation. 

I had more success in argument before a court than a jury. 
I never had much of the ad captandiiiii. I was quite fluent, 
and was accurate in style and pronunciation. I relied on 
lucid order and the logic of ideas on the law and the facts. 
I never wrote out or committed any portion of a speech at 
the bar. Nor was I accustomed to take notes of the testi- 
mony; finding that they confused and diluted my argument, 
I generally relied altogether on my memory, which, when- 
ever it was my sole reliance, never failed as to any material 
fact or witness. And thus retaining all that was essential, 
and unembarrassed by non-essentials, my memory was more 
vivid, my ideas more consecutive and clear, and my argu 
ment more vigorous, concentrated and impressive. I was a 
clear, chaste and ingenious debater, but was never what is 
generally considered an orator. I succeeded in many hope- 
less cases, and but seldom lost a good one. I charged low 
fees, and was so indulgent in the collection of them as to lose 
about half of my earnings. I never deceived a client, nor 
played on his ignorance or fear or confidence in me, to ex- 
tort an exorbitant fee. And invariably, when I had done a 
client's business without a special contract. 1 charged the 
minimum fee for the like services. As earh' as 181 5, I had, 

*See Note B, Appendix. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 37 



by study and practice, become a good lawyer, and when 
only 25 years old, I thought I knew more law than I think 
I do now at the mellow age of 68. This .was not the effect 
of juvenile vanity, so much as of comparative ignorance ; 
and m)' case, in that respect, is every man's case who pro- 
gresses in knowledge. The sciolist is dogmatic and vain, 
because he is ignorant of the vast field of knowledge unseen 
by his circumscribed vision. The higher he rises the more 
extended becomes his horizon of unexplored knowledge ; 
and the more he learns the more he feels the insignificance 
and uncertainty of all human knowledge, compared with a 
philosophical cyclopedia of universal truth ; consequently the 
more he knows, the more he sees which he does not know, 
and his humility increases, pari passait, with his progress in 
true science. 

I remember many forensic incidents which occurred in my 
junior practice — some of them didactic, some intensely dra- 
matic, and some ridiculously ludicrous — and, for the amuse- 
ment of those who shall come after me in a more polished 
a^j'e, I will here recite three of the latter character. 
^i. * * * * "Sheriff," said the Judge, 

"take that man to the stocks and keep him there till the 
further order of the Court." "There's no stocks," replied 
the Sheriff. "Then," rejoined the Judge, "I see a new fence 
near the door ; take him there, raise some of the rails and 
put his neck between them." The Sheriff executed the last 
order ; and the rails, being new and large, choked the man 
until the Sheriff, thinking he was dying, ran into Ourt, and, 
acquainting the Court with the alarming fact, was directed to 
take the man out. When the Sheriff extricated him he was 
breathless and blue, and was not revived for some time, but, 
as soon as he could speak, swore that it was the last time he 
would be guilty of contempt. Of that scene I was not a 
spectator, but the facts are well authenticated. 

2. I was at the first Circuit Court holden in Mount Ver- 
non, Rockcastle county. There was no court-house. A 



38 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



large log-house (Langford's), without any opening, for ven- 
tilation, except a door and a small window on the same side, 
was fitted for the temporary use of the Court, by a high 
bench for the Judge to sit on, and a lower one to rest his 
feet on, each made of the half of a green poplar tree, split 
for the occasion. The first day of the term was an exceed- 
ingly hot one in August ; and a large crowd of men, women 
and children having come, in their mountain habiliments, to 
see the first C'ourt ever opened in that quarter of the State, 
the court-room was full of humanity and human odor, with 
scarcely more vital atmosphere than the "black hole of Cal- 
cutta." Judge Kelly had taken some mint punch, and was 
very much annoyed by heat, stench and noise. Henry But 
ford, the Clerk, was fond of a dram, and had taken a little 
too much. He sat at a square table in front of the Judge. 
In the evening, when the Judge had become impatient and 
irascible, a large fat man, named Spencer, dressed in leather 
huntino- shirt, breeches and moccasins, with a butcher's knife 
at his side, disturbed the Court by obstreperous cursing near 
the door. The Sheriff, having brought him into Court 
drunk, the Judge fined him five shillings for being drunk. 
He pulled out a long and greasy leather purse, full of silver 
dollars. The attention of the entire crowd was attracted by 
the novel scene, and perfect silence prevailed during the 
whole drama. After repeated efforts to untie the purse, 
Spencer carefully picked out a dollar and tendered it to the 
Clerk, saying, "There, Harry, give mc my change." The 
Clerk having refused to take the money, Spencer, drunk as 
he was, crawled up to the Judge, and, holding 'the dollar 
between his fingers, said, "Here, Mr. Kelly, is your money; 
take your pay and give mc my change." The Judge, re- 
buking him, told him that it was not his money, and he 
would not change his dollar. Thereupon Spencer de iber- 
ately replaced his dollar in his purse, which having slowly 
tied, he marched out through the crowd with a triumphant 
and defiant port, ejaculating, "The poorest Court I ever seed 
— can't change a dollar!" 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 39 



3. Many years after the foregoing scene, another Judge 
of the same Court, arriving through mud and rain tlie first 
day of a term, took the bench wet and chilled, and in a mood 
not altogether pleasant. The crowd in and out of the court 
house was large, and disturbed the Court by noise. A jack 
led around the court-house aggravated the disturbance, and 
the Judge had ordered it to be removed. The order not 
being promptly obeyed, the jack continued for sometime to 
bray near the court-house. Just at that time a man was 
heard cursing loud at the door, who, being brought in for 
contempt, was fined. He then, in a suppliant tone, assured 
the Court that he had intended no contempt, and in response 
to the question, "Why were you swearing so loud at the 
door?" said, "Judge, a man was showing a little jackass 
around the court-house, and the jack was braying so that 
nobody could hear nothing else, and the Court couldn't do 
no business, and I jest said, God damn that Jack." The Judge, 
rising with sympathetic indignation, said to the Clerk, "Re- 
mit that fine; I say damn the jack too." 

When I was engaged as prosecuting attorney, an unusual 
quantity of indictments were filed for misdemeanors and 
crimes, principally in the county of Knox, one of which I 
may be permitted to mention with emphasis, on the last day 
of the Knox February term, and after the Grand Jury had 
been adjourned, two twin brothers from North Carolina, 
passing through to Indiana, and genteelly clad, were brought 
into Court on the charge of larceny at Cheek's public house, 
on the high road, a special Grand Jury was summoned and 
found true bills against both of them, each of whom was 
thereupon tried, convicted and sentenced to confinement in 
the Penitentiary, and before sundown that same day they 
were both on their way to the place of punishment. This 
remarkable case may illustrate the dispatch and fidelity of the 
public functionaries of that day \v. the mountains of Ken- 
tucky. 

I resided in the house I first occupied only three moiUhs. 



40 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



I removed to a framed house with two rooms, called the tan- 
yard place, improved by Col. Yantis. There my oldest 
child, Margaret Eliza, was born January 25th, 181 1. She 
was born apparently dead. We named her after my mother 
and my wife's sister, Shackleford. She was married to Will- 
iam S. Buford, when she \\as only about three months over 
seventeen years of age. She is still living, the mother of 
nine children, is also a grandmother, and is only about twenty 
years younger than her father. 

In the summer of the year 181 1 I removed to a log house 
on the Danville street, adjoining a framed house on the 
southwest corner of the public square. There my daughter, 
Eleanor Mcintosh, was born January 28th, 18 13, and was 
named after her maternal grandmother. She was married to 
Dr, Samuel M. Letcher, is the mother of se\'en children, and 
now lives near me in Lexington. 

About a year before her birth, finding that I wasted small 
sums of money which I thought I might prudently save, I 
cut a hole in the top of a closed cigar box, and determined 
to put into it every piece of silver I could from time to time 
spare, for one year, for the purpose of saving all I could 
without nuaii self-denial. At the end of the experimental 
year, supposing that I had not saved more than about fifty 
dollars, I opened the box and was agreeably surprised when 
I found four hundred and fifty dollars, not one cent of which 
\\'Ould I have saved had I not resorted to that expedient. 
With this discovery I felt quite rich ; and, to avoid a waste, 
I immediately invested the fund in a new brick house on the 
north side of Danville street, to which I removed in April, 
18 1 3, and where I lived nine years. There my daughters, 
Mary Oden Eppes and Charlotte Corday, and my son, Alex- 
ander Hamilton, were born — the first. May the 5th, 181 5; 
the second, June the 14th, 1817; and the last, March the 

17th, . 

Not long after I became a freeholder I abstained more and 
more from card playing for money, until about the year 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 4 I 



1 82 1, when I quit it altogether. As long as I continued to 
play, I was inflexibly abstemious, and acquired no other bad 
habit or taste from improper associations. When I was not 
more than eight years old I had been so much tempted with 
intoxicating liquors used almost daily by company at my 
father's, as to fear that my appetite ha(] become morbid ; and 
convinced that if I persisted much longer in the indulgence 
of it I could never be a proper man, I resolved to try the ex- 
periment of total abstinence. But fearing that I could not 
adhere to a resolution nez'cr to drink, and even then feeling 
that to break a mental pledge would impair the efficacy of a 
re-resolve, I determined not to taste for one month. This, 
through great temptation and tribulation, I completely ful- 
filled. But it was a sort of expcriuicntuni crucis. My self- 
complacency at my triumph more than compensated for all 
the privation and agony of the fearful ordeal. When my 
month was out I did not, as most boys and even men would 
have done, drink a drop, but, concluding that as I succeeded 
once, I could more easily and certainly succeed again. I 
continued tetotalism from month to month for more than a 
year before my appetite was entirely subdued. For several 
years afterwards I tasted no intoxicating drink, and can truly 
say that, although in my public life I have been in many 
convivial parties where others became inebriated, yet I was 
never drunk in my whole life. I never allowed myself to 
pass the limit of pleasant exhilaration and perfect self-posses- 
sion. 

In 1 8 14 I was appointed principal assessor of the Federal 
direct tax for my Congressional district. The duties of that 
office engaged a large portion of my time for about a year, 
and enabled me to make nearly twelve hundred dollars, and 
extend my acquaintance with the people of the district. The 
manner in which I fulfilled the trust and mixed with the peo- 
ple in a candid, upright and affable spirit, commended me to 
their approval and favorable consideration. I also argued 
causes at the bar. In 18 15 I appeared in the Mercer Circuit 



42 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



Court for the first time as sole counsel for Gen'l Thomas 
Kennedy, in an action of detinue brought against him by 
Edward Worthington, for about fifty valuable slaves. Row- 
an, James Haggin, and several other distinguished counsel, 
appeared for Worthington. I had confidence in my case, 
which turned, as I thought, on the legal question whether 
an oral gift to Mrs. Worthington in Virginia since 1758, and 
when she was an infant in the family of her father, under 
whose transfer Gen'l Kennedy claimed the descendants of a 
female slave so given to the child, was valid against bone fide 
purchasers from her father. Being comparatively young, at 
a strange and celebrated bar, and standing alone against such 
an array of the most distinguished lawyers in Kentucky, and 
in a cause so important, I advised my wealthy client to em- 
ploy some assistant counsel. But having been successful for 
him in other cases, he ignorantly thought that I could not 
fail in a good cause, and would stake his fifty slaves on me 
alone. When the Plaintiff closed his evidence I moved for a 
non-suit, which motion, after elaborate argument, was sus- 
tained by Judge Kelly, who, although a brother-in-law and 
admirer of Rowan, was also my friend, and firm and impar- 
tial in his judgments. My argument and success in that case 
gave me great eclat and more reputation than I deserved. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 43 



CHAPTER IV. 

As early as the close of the year 1815, when I was only 
about 25 years of age, I had, through my little office and my 
profession, become a rather conspicuous favorite in my Con- 
gressional disti ict. In the spring of 18 16, the only news- 
paper in the district — the Luminary — announced that McKee 
would not be a candidate for re-election, and that I was a 
candidate to succeed him. I nev^-r could ascertain why or 
at whose instance that announcement had been made. Mc- 
Kee, who was my brother-in-law, had not declined, though 
he had been talking about a purpose to do so, and I had 
never thought of being a candidate. Having just then ob- 
tained an extensive practice, and being poor and the father 
of three children, I had no political aspirations, and felt that 
to quit my practice, just become profitable and promising, 
and embark on the sea of political life, -would be premature 
and inexcusably unjust to my dependent and growing family. 
Under the influence of that sentiment, strengthened by sur- 
prise and mortification at a publication so unauthorized, so 
unexpected, and so unwelcome, I resolved to contradict the 
announcement; but McKee and other friends advised me to 
await some spontaneous development of public opinion. I 
soon discovered that my supposed candidacy was favorably 
received, and that I could probably be elected. I then con- 
cluded to let the people use me as a candidate, resolving, as 
I thought I did inflexibly, that, if elected, I would serve only 
one term, and employ no electioneering means of conciliat- 
ing popular favor. 



■\ 



44 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



In a short time Gen. Robert B. McAfee, Governor Slaugh- 
ter, Col. George C. Thompson, all of Mercer, and Gen. 
Samuel South, Major Robert Caldwell, and John Speed 
Smith, all of Madison, were also announced as candidates. 
After feeling the popular pulse, all of these competitors, ex- 
cept Caldwell and Smith, declined ; and Smith also declined 
about two months before the election, leaving the track to 
Caldwell and myself, who ran the race alone, and which 
resulted in my election by a majority of 1,036 votes. At 
Harrodsburg alone I received, on the first of the three days 
election, about 1,000 votes, which was the best vote ever 
given there for any candidate before or since. And in my 
own county of Garrard I lost only 62 votes during the entire 
election. 

During the whole canvass I drank nothing intoxicating 
myself, and was opposed in principle to the use of any such 
prostituting argument for aiding my election. I told the 
people so in my public addresses, in which I was, in all re- 
.spects, perfectly candid. I did not desire success otherwise 
than by a spontaneous preference of me, after as full an ex 
hibition of my principles and character as I could afford to 
the electors. To have succeeded on any other ground would 
have been to me not an honorable, but humiliating, triumph. 
Consequently, although the political obligation of popular 
instructions was the current and apparently universal doc- 
trine, and no inquiry was made of me concerning it, never- 
theless I felt it my duty to tell the people that I did not 
recognize that doctrine, and that, if elected, I would, with 
proper respect for public opinion, always act on my own 
judgment of my duty to my whole country, and on my 
whole responsibility, representative, personal, and constitu- 
tional. And while my prudent and more diplomatic friends 
expostulated and argued that I would gratuitously commit 
suicide by advocating an unpopular doctrine, which no other 
person agitated, I continued to discuss it, because I was un- 
willing to be elected without showing a full hand. And the 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 45 



result proved that the truth, properly defended, will, sooner or 
later, be indorsed by the people, and will never long injure 
its firm, candid, and competent champion. In all my elec- 
tions to Congress and the State Legislature I never used 
money or liquor to procure votes; nor did I ever conceal or 
dissemble an opinion to conciliate opposition. I never re- 
sorted to any species of artifice or electioneering otherwise 
than by what little intrinsic strength I possessed and the 
power of my principles. I never, at the polls or in a deliber- 
ate assembly, ga\-e a vote on any other ground than principle ; 
therefore, had I the power, I would not change a vote I ever 
gave. Consequentl}' I never felt an\- embarrassment or per- 
turbation in the discharge of my public duties, and was never 
disturbed by any fear of responsibility. My controlling 
maxim was "better to be right even at the cost of temporary 
ostracism, than to be President at the expense of hypocrisy, 
felt error, or remorse of conscience." And now, for the 
encouragement of others, I am pleased to say that I never 
suffered in public opinion or incurred reproach for any vote I 



ever gave. 



In m\' first canvass for Congress an incident occurred, both 
ludicrous and memorable, which I may, without impropriety, 
here record. Clay county, on the frontier of my district, m- 
cluded all the Cumberland mountain territory now in that 
countv and the counties of Harlan, Letcher, Perry, Owsley, 
and Breathitt. M\' first \'isit to that county was in June, 
about six weeks before the election. I reached Manchester 
late in the afternoon of the first day of a Circuit Court. I 
was surprised to see a crowd of nearly two thousand men, 
women and children, who had congregated from all parts cf 
the county to see Court, which many of them had ne\-er seen 
before. I had never before seen more than a dozen of the 
voters of the county. Caldwell and Smith were both well 
acquainted there, and were popular; and each of them used 
money and whisky without stint. Poinding the wist crowd 
clamorously shouting, some for Caldwell, some for Smith, 



46 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

and none for me, I regretted that I was there. Without 
speaking to any person, I retired to a shed of the cabin 
tavern, and there remained sleepless all night. Ruminating 
on what I should do to initiate an acquaintance with the sov- 
ereigns of the mountains, I concluded to make a public ad- 
dress to them ; but I was perplexed as to the character of 
the speech best adapted to such an auditory. Before I left 
my room next morning I had moulded the substance of my 
speech, and when Court was about to sit I was politely ten- 
dered by the Judge the use of the court-yard, and the Sheriff 
having made proclamation of m}^ purpose, a vast crowd soon 
surrounded me and listened with great respect and interest 
to my speech, which happened to hit the nail right on the 
head. I never made a speech so universally satisfactory and 
effectual. I was greeted with obstreperous applause, and 
the people of all ages and both sexes sought introductions to 
me, and followed me with shouts and pledges of their sup- 
port. This result was so unexpected as to make me feel 
much self-complacency. But, apprehending that the favor- 
able impression I had made would be transient and be soon 
o/ercome by other influences, J had no expectation that, 
without organization or money, I would receive many votes. 
1 intended instantly to leave for home not to return ; and, 
full of gratification for the first fruits of my hopeless visit as 
a stranger, I started for the tavern to pay my bill and order 
my horse, but, attracted by an immense circle of men and 
women, I paused, on my way, to see what they were doing; 
and, finding that persons were dancing within the ring, I 
I pressed through to the inner edge of the circle, and saw a 
man dancing a solo to the fiddle of a small man, half Indian, 
named Sisciiioir, who had come from Lee county, in Vir- 
ginia, to play for the occasion. I observed that the daacer 
had on an old iron spur, and that when he had finished his 
part in the novel "drama, his successor put on the same spur. 
The reason of this I did not inquire, but presumed that it 
was to show the superior skill of the dancer. While I was 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 4/ 

thus enjoying the strange scene as a spectator, I observ^ed 
men on the opposite side of the circle engaged in conversa- 
tion and looking toward and pointing at me. I at once 
thought that some person had told them that I performed 
admirably on the violin, and that they were consulting about 
inviting me to give them a s'^mple of my music. I was not 
mistaken. They approached me, and, bowing, said that 
having heard that I was the greatest fiddler in the world, 
they requested me to play a tune. Anticipating their object 
before they saluted me, I had resolved to comply with their 
request with apparent alacrity ; for, although it was almost 
crucifixion to be placed in such a position — a candidate for 
Congress fiddling in the street for such a multitude — )'et I 
knew that refusal would be ascribed by them to aristocratic 
pride, and seal my destiny in the mountains ; and, feeling 
that reluctant -compliance would be unsatisfactory, I de- 
termined to make the effort without hesitancy and with all 
possible grace. I therefore instantly responded that I could 
not equal their Virginia musician, but that I would, with 
pleasure, do the best I could. Sisemore played unusually 
well for such an occasion ; and, although with a good violin 
and at a suitable place, I could then play exceedingly well, I 
apprehended that, there in the open air, on a -^racked fiddle 
I had never touched, and in such a presence, I would not 
please the expectant crowd as well as Sisemore ; conse- 
quently, knowing how much depended on my performance, 
I took his backwoods fiddle and tuned it with as much 
tremulous anxiety as Wellington when he commenced the 
battle of Waterloo. They requested an old Virginia reel, 
which was one of my favorites. I did my best, and pla}-ed 
the tune with variations in such a style as to transport, with 
obstreperous joy, the whole crowd. Sisemore was kicked 
out, and told that he was no fiddler. The people were so 
spell-bound as to detain me, vi ct armis, for two days and 
nights. They all declared that I sJiould be elected, and some 
of the men swore that they would go w ith me to Washing- 
ton just to hear and dance after my music on the way. 



48 LIFE OF GEORGE ROPERTSON. 



Knowing the popularity and appliances of my competitors, 
I expected that the good impressions my speech and music 
had made would Jdc fugitive, and soon give way to other in- 
fluences. This was my first and last visit to Clay. I left 
not a dollar, and made no arrangements for organizing and 
bringing voters to the polls Smith declined, and Major 
Caldwell and myself ran the race out alone. I received 
about 800 votes, and Caldwell only about 70. 

In the can\-ass and election, I did not spend a dollar, ex- 
cept for a printed circular and traveling expenses, which 
altogether did not amount to fifty dollars ! I had no money 
to waste, and, if I had been as rich as Astor or Girard, op- 
posed in principle to the prostitution of the elective franchise, 
I would not, to save my election, have applied, directly or 
indirectly, one cent to bribery. In all my addresses I told 
the people so. And this, in my judgment, helped much 
more than it hurt me. 

When I receix'ed the certificate of my elecMon I was not 
twenty-six years old ; but I did not take my seat until I was 
about ten da)-s o\'er twent\'-seven. The best mode of travel- 
ing then was on horseback; and I thus went to Washington 
in November, 18 17, and also in 18 18, and consumed nine- 
teen days in the first, and seventeen days in the latter trip. 
Members of Coni^ress then earned their allowance of three 
dollars for every twenty miles of a travel, which was com- 
paritively tedious, toilsome, and expensi\'e. And I will 
here mention an incident in my first trip to Washington, 
which may be as useful as it is incredible: I bought a blooded 
three-year old horse for my first journey to the National Cap- 
ital. He had never been shod. An old friend in Garrard 
(Elijah Hyatt), who was famous for both skill and care in 
the management of horses, took my young horse and pre- 
pared him for the work before him. The da\- before I 
started for my destination, he selected the iron and the 
shoes, saw the shoes put on and every nail made and driven ; 
and when he brought the horse to me, he said, "Now, 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 49 

George, alV s right ; your horse will carry you over the long 
and rocky road to Washington without breaking a shoe or 
loosening a nail." And so it turned out. Several gentlemen 
who accompanied me frequently had their horses' shoes re- 
moved or repaired, and mine reached Washington with his 
shoes apparently as sound and firm as when I started. I 
sent him to the country to be kept during the session, which 
continued about seven months. He was brought in to me 
the day I left for home, and the keeper told me he had used 
him as his saddle horse, and never had touched his shoes, 
which appeared as good as ever Being impatient to start, 
I did not have them examined, but rode him as he was to 
Wheeling, brought him to Maysville on a flatboat or ark, 
and rode him thence to Lancaster; and when I reached 
home his hoofs and shoes seemed to be in good condition ! 
During the session of the Kentucky Legislature, com- 
mencing the first Monday in December, 18 16, a resolution 
passed the House of Representatives for a new election of 
Governor over the head of the Lieutenant Governor, whose 
term of four years had just commenced. This led to a pop- 
ular excitement which agitated the State almost to revolution 
for more than a year. In the summer of 18 17 I wrote an 
argument against a i;evv election, over the signature of "^ 
Kentuckia/i,'' which the sympathizing party had published 
and extensively circulated in pamphlet form. It turned the 
tide, and gave me a very high character, much beyond my 
deserts. Thus I took my seat the first Monday in De- 
cember, 18 1 7, under auspices peculiarly encouraging. I was 
put on the Committee of Internal Improvement, then one of 
the most important, especially as the President (Monroe) 
had, in his first message, attempted to forestall Congress by 
an argument against the constitutionality of congressional 
appropriations for national improvements. Gen'l Tucker, of 
Virginia, was chairman, and Henry Storrs and Gen'l Tal- 
madge, of New York, were associate members of the com- 
mittee. We were unanimously of the opinion that the 
3 



50 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



President was wrong, and so reported. But, as strict con- 
structionism prevailed in Virginia, our chairman, who wrote 
an elaborate report, argued only to prove the power with 
the consent of the States ! The other members of the com- 
mittee thought that, if the Constitution did not confer the 
power, the States could not. But, to go with their chair- 
man, they consented to his report as far as it went, reserv- 
ing the right to urge, in oral argument, the nneonditional 
power. The chairman opened the debate on the report. 
It was expected that P. P. Barbour, of Virginia, would re- 
ply, and, by the arrangement of the committee, I was to 
answer ///;-'/. As I was the youngest member in the H3use^ 
and had this herculean duty devolved on me before I had 
made my debnt, I prepared a written speech, moulded for 
such additions as the occasion might suggest Mr. Clay 
read and extolled it. It contained all the substantial argu- 
ments ever since made in favor of the power. But it was 
never delivered. ' When Gen'l Tucker closed his opening 
speech, and Barbour, as expected, was taking the floor, 
Mr. Clay rose and challenged him to a single combat ; and 
consequently when Barbour closed, the committee yielded the 
immediate rejoinder to Mr. Clay, who, therefore, followed 
him and anticipated so many of my arguments as to preclude 
me from then speaking with proper respect for the House or 
myself A protracted debate ensued. While it continued 
I was frequently urged to speak, and every day took the floor 
for that purpose ; but some bolder and more practical de- 
bater always got the start of me, until I felt that it was too 
late for me to speak to reluctant ears. I retained the draft 
of that projected speech until lately, and, by comparing it 
with -all that has since been urged by others, can truly say 
that it presented every good argument that has ever been 
made in favor of the power. 

My first speech was made on a commutation bill, which, 
on my argument, was radically changed by an unanimous 
vote. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 5 I 

During the session, which closed in May, I acquired a 
character better than I had any right to expect. In April I 
went with my friend and colleague, R. C. Anderson, to Phila- 
delphia, where we remained a week, seeing and enjoying 
much. Our fille dc clianibre was a beautiful girl, the daugh- 
ter of a lady of broken fortunes, who resided in a fine house 
opposite to the. "Mansion House" on Third street, where we 
sojourned. The only compensation the servants expected 
was from the voluntary contributions from the patrons of the 
hotel. When I left I handed her five dollars. She thanked 
me graciously, and said that some dog who had been occupy- 
ing my room not long before had given her only a lottery 
ticket, which she considered worthless. But I was gratified 
by reading in a Philadelphia paper, shortly after my return 
to Washington, that her ticket drew the highest prize of 
$ 1 00, 000 ! 

At the first dinner after our arrival in Philadelphia, an in- 
cident occurred which was rather embarrassing to me. A 
few minutes after our names had been registered, dinner was 
announced. On entering the dining saloon I discovered a 
brilliant party, consisting chiefly of foreign diplomats and 
naval officers, and I saw that every plate except Anderson's 
and mine was served with bottles of various wines. This 
was what I had never seen before. Without inquiry or re- 
flection, I supposed that wine was a part of the dinner, and 
was, for convenient use, placed at each plate; and that the 
only reason why our two plates were not supplied like all the 
others, was that the dinner service had been completed before 
we arrived. With that impression, I bowed to a naval 
officer to my left (Commodore Chauncey, I think,) and asked 
him to join me in a glass of wine, he having three bottles 
and I none. After a momentary pause of evident surprise, 
in which the other guests seemed to sympathize, he courte- 
ously assented, and requested me to choose my wine. I 
shortly afterwards proposed a glass to Anderson, which he 
significantly declined, having, as I also had, discovered, by 



52 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

the impression my blunder had made, that all was not a la 
Chesterfield. As soon as I had dined I reprimanded the 
major donio for not furnishing me with wine. He, instead of 
replying that I had ordered none, apologized, and promised 
that, if I would excuse him, I should have no further cause 
to complain, and, inquiring what kind of wine I would have 
for dinner next day, I ordered a bottle of Maderia and 
another of Sherry, intending to redeem my character next 
day. But, to my regret, my neighbor was gone. And I 
have no doubt that he often told the ludicrous anecdott about 
the young member of Congress from the backwoods of Ken- 
tucky. 

I returned home about the 22d of May, i8i8. Col. R. 
M. Johnson, J. J. Crittenden, and myself travelled home- 
ward together — Col. J. in a Jersey wagon, and Mr. C. and I 
on horseback to Wheeling, whence we descended to Mays- 
ville in an ark, with much privation and discomfort. When 
I beheld my native Kentucky,* at the mouth of the Big 
Sandy, I could not refrain from tears ; m}' long absence and 
instinctive attachments overwhelmed me with the memories 
and the hopes of young wife and children and " Sivcet 
Home. 

On reaching home I found John Speed Smith a candidate 
for my seat ; and, although I did not desire a re-election, 
and had so announced, yet unwilling to be apparently shoved 
out, I felt it due to honor to become a candidate again. But 
after canvassing the district a few days. Smith again declined, 
and I was re-elected without any opposition. During the 
next session, without consulting any person, even my friend 
John Scott, then the delegate from Missouri, I introduced a 
bill for the organization of the Territory of Arkansas. When, 
on discussion, the House became reconciled to the bill, and 
it was ready for the question on the third reading, John W. 
Taylor, of New York, moved an amendment interdicting 
slavery. After an exciting debate, the amendment for pro- 

*See Appendix C. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 53 



spective interdiction prevailed by a vote of 72 against 70. 
On my motion, the bill was then recommitted to a large and 
conservative committee, who struck out the anti-slavery 
clause, and recommended the passage of the bill in the orig- 
inal form in which I had first presented it. On the question 
of concurring with the committee, two of my Northern 
friends, who had voted for Taylor's amendment, being pur- 
posely absent, the vote was 70 — 70, and Mr. Clay (then 
Speaker) gave the casting vote against Congressional inter- 
vention. My speech against intervention was published, and 
is yet preserved in my "Scrap-Book." In that speech I con- 
ceded the mere power of Congress, but endeavored to show 
that policy forbade the exercise of it; and I predicted the 
consequences whicli would result, and have residted, from the 
national agitation of slavoy. 

President Monroe offered me the appointment of Governor 
of the new Territory, which I first declined; but, being 
urged by his Cabinet, I agreed to accept, with the under- 
standing that I would take my family to the Territory, and, 
if we should be unwilling to make it our permanent home, I 
might resign. There were several applicants for the office, 
all of whom withdrew because they were told by the Presi- 
dent that I would be appointed. But in the meantime I 
voted for Mr. Clay's Seminole resolutions, which offended 
Mr. Monroe, who then revoked his invitation on pretence of 
ineligibility on the ground that I voted to create the office, 
although the law was postponed in its operation until the 
4th of July, 18 19, four months after the expiration of my 
Congressional term, and although many precedents recog- 
nized my constitutional eligibility ; and even though the 
Cabinet unanimously decided that the President's objection 
was indefensible. These facts being known, nearly every 
Senator, and multitudes of others in high position, volun- 
tarily, without my agency, urged my appointment. I was 
then a favorite in Kentucky, and popular in Congress, and a 
knowledge of this fact, and the unusual importunity and 



54 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



unanimity of disinterested men in my favor, impressed the 
President with the perilous responsibiHty of his conduct. 
And, to help rescue him in Kentucky, he, without solicita- 
tion, nominated my brother-in-law, R. P. Letcher, a Judge, 
and R. Crittenden, brother of J. J. Crittenden, Secretary of 
Arkansas. On the third of March, a Cabinet council was 
held on the subject of my appointment, at the close of which 
John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, requested me not 
to leave, as I intended, that day for home, as the President 
would send my nomination to the Senate in an hour, and de- 
sired me to remain a few days to receive some instructions. 
But in less than an hour. Col. Miller, of the army, who had 
never before been suggested for the office, was nominated! 
This surprised Cabinet, Senate, and all applicants for territo- 
rial appointments, and, as much as any other person. Miller, 
Letcher, and Crittenden themselves. 

This case illustrates one of Mr. Monroe's infirmities — un- 
reasonable and invincible obstinacy when egotism or passion 
operated on his opinions. 

Having promised to accept the appointment on the condi- 
tion that if, on a visit with my family to the Territory, I 
should prefer not to settle there, I might resign, I bought a 
traveling carriage at $i,000, for which I had no use in Ken- 
tucky, and the purchase of which absorbed one-fourth of 
my estate ; and I did think that the President ought to have 
taken this unbefitting incumbrance off my hands. But all 
he ever did for reparation was to offer me, as he afterwards 
did, several more attractive offices than the proconsulship of 
Arkansas — all of which I dechned on an inflexible resolve 
to accept no favor from him. In the summer of 1819 he 
visited Kentucky and sojourned for some weeks at the Green- 
ville Springs, in my district, where I attended him during his 
stay and treated him with all proper courtesy and hospitality ; 
and when he left, I accompanied him to a ball given to him 
at Danville, and introduced him to my constituents there 
assembled to see and to honor him. Had I received the 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 55 

appointment provisionally, as alone I had agreed, I am satis- 
fied that I would not have retained it long, or settled in 
Arkansas. 

In 1820 I initiated the present system of selling the pub- 
lic lands, which, as a substitute for the former mode of selling 
on credit at a minimum of two dollars an acre, requires pay- 
ment without credit, reduced to the minimum of price to one 
dollar and twenty-five cents, and of quantity to eighty acres, 
whereby any poor man who could command one hundred 
dollars might purchase a home, and non resident speculations 
were in a great degree prevented, heavy and hopeless in- 
debtedness to the General Government avoided, and the 
population of the vacant territories facilitated and encouraged. 
I now, as I then anticipated and argued, look on this as one 
of the most beneficent measures ever enacted by Congress. 
The Western members, with the exception of R. C. Ander- 
son, Ben Hardin, and myself, opposed it as anti-western, and 
I was warned that my support of it would seal my political 
ostracism. But, sure that I was right, I urged it in defiance 
of the prospect of personal proscription. Henry Clay op- 
posed it with great zeal, and his argument against it occupied 
the session of one day. I replied to him in a speech of 
three hours length, the substance of which was published in 
the "National Intelligencer," and is preserved in my "Scrap- 
Book." 

To my surprise, no one of my constituents complained of 
my conduct, and the act soon became universally popular. 
The discussion was confined almost exclusively to Mr. Clay 
and myself, and the bill was passed by a majority of about 
four-fifths of the votes in the House of Representative^--. 
When General Harrison was a candidate for President, his 
popularity was greatly increased in the West and Northwest 
by the ascription to hi))! of the authorship of that enactment. 
I was silent, and he then got the credit of it, though he was 
not even a member of Congress when it was introduced 
and passed. 



56 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

During a service of four years, I was a member of the 
committee on internal improv^ement, and also of the judiciar}', 
and chairman of the committee on private land claims. In 
the latter capacity I saved to the Government the whole of 
the land called the Washita grant. Reports had been suc- 
cessively made in favor of the claimants by Richard Rush as 
Attorney General, and by Albert Gallatin and A. J. Dallas, 
Secretaries of the Treasury. Robert Walsh, as agent of the 
claimants, presented their claims to my committee. The 
original grantee undertook to bring to that country four 
hundred families and settle them within a definite boundary. 
He and his assignees constituting the petitioning company, 
claimed all the land within the prescribed limits, on the 
ground that he had partially performed his contract, and 
would have fulfilled his entire undertaking had the Govern- 
ment complied with its obligations, and that his failure was 
produced by conduct of the Government. The committee, 
excepting myself, were for some time unanimous for a report 
in favor of the claim. I deferred a report until I ascertained, 
and convinced the other members, that had the grantee ful- 
filled his whole contract he would have been entitled only to 
certain water power for flouring and other manufacturing 
purposes, and could have had, in no event, a right to any 
land. And finally we so reported, and Mr. Walsh retired 
greatly disappointed, and the claim has never been renewed. 

I had been elected for a third term, the elections then 
being the year before the commencement of the term But, 
on my return home after the close of my second term, I re- 
signed my third term. I was pleased with political life, and 
my prospects were encouraging. Had I been affluent, or 
without a family, I would have preferred to continue in pub- 
lic life. But, poor, and having a growing family, I felt a 
a paramount and sacred obligation to give up my political 
prospects, and devote myself to my profession and my wife 
and children. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. ' 57 



CHAPTER V. 

In the spring of the year 1821, I resumed the practice of 
law, and soon had as much employment as I could well at- 
tend to. Gov. Adair, though a political opponent, spon- 
taneously offered me the Attorney Generalship of Kentucky, 
which I declined ; after which he, in like manner, tendered 
me the Judgeship of the Fayette Circuit, backed by an offer 
of the Trustees of Transylvania of the professorship of law in 
that institution, both of which -I also declined, because I de- 
sired no office, and felt resolved to prosecute my profession 
vigorously for some years, until I could thereby procure a 
competency for independence, which I might have done in 
ten years or less. 

But the professional purpose of my resignation of a seat in 
Congress was, in a great degree, frustrated by my Garrard 
constituents, who, in 1823, nolens volcns, sent me to the 
House of Representatives of the Kentucky Legislature, to 
help to guide the ship of State through the ''relief and anti- 
relief and ";/£W and old eowf storm which had then com- 
menced to rage, and which, having reluctantly embarked, I 
rode out until 1827, when it was lulled by the final triumph 
of the Constitution. During three years of that service I 
was Speaker of the House of Representatives, and during the 
whole of it was almost incessantly engaged, on the stump, 
through the press, and in the Legislature, in debating the 
constitutional questions which agitated the State more than 
it was ever convulsed before or since. Some of those ad- 



58 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



dresses are preserved in my "Scrap Book," and may speak 
for themselves and for me. 

During that convulsive period I had to neglect my forensic 
practice to such an extent as to leave me but little profit 
from it. But, in the spring of the year 1827, 1 resumed it 
with energy, and encouraging prospects of soon obtaining 
all I ever coveted of earth's trash — a competency for rational 
comfort and independence. And this I might have soon se- 
cured had I been able to persist in my resolution of self- 
denial of all political and official allurements, and, comforma- 
bly with which resolution, I declined the ofier of nomination 
by my party for the office of Governor in the year 1828. 
Gen'l Metcalfe, having been substituted and elected, urged 
me to accept the post of Secretary of State, which I declined; 
but, my party requiring my acceptance, I finally accepted, 
and was preparing to settle in Frankfort, where the changed 
condition of the bar and augmented business of the courts 
and my favorable position in the public eye would have in 
sured me affluence in a fev; ycu - I'uit again my party, 
treating me as a leader whose • .■-.- ihey claimed the right 
to call into any field of labor, controlled my will, and called 
me to the Appellate bench, then by . ihe most onerous and 
irksome, and, to me, the least welcome of all important and 
honorable public trusts. I had no taste for judicial service. 
The labors of an Appellate Judge were then herculean. The 
salary ($1,500 in the depreciated currency, worth less than 
$1,000 in cash,) was grossly inadequate, and about equal to 
my salary as Secretary of State— to me a place of pastime — 
and, by going on the bench I knc w that I would not only 
make an immense pecuniary sacrifice, but be doomed to 
ostracism from popular fa\'or, and subjected to an unwel- 
come privation of social and personal liberty. I therefore 
revolted at the prospect of such crucifixion on the bench. 
But the deleated party had a small majority. Some of 
them preferred me, urged me to accept, and would vote 
for no other perse n in the victorious party. My party 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



59 



therefore demanded my nomination and acceptance, and 
left me no other honorable alternative; and assurin'o- me 
that I might resign at any time after one year's incum- 
bency, I was constrained to yield, and felt that I was going 
to the altar as a self-sacrificed victim to party policy. 

Upon my appointment, Chief-Justice Bibb, who had been 
leader of the antipodal party, resigned. His place was not 
filed till the i6th of December, 1829, when I was com- 
missioned Chief-Justice of Kentucky. My commission as 
Judge was dated December 24th, 1828. During the interval 
of nearly a year between these commissions, all the heavy 
duties of the court devolved on my associate (Judge Under- 
wood) and myself, and we had not one day of relaxation • 
and, for about seven succeeding years, I was not permitted 
to enjoy the undisturbed leisure of a "Cotter's Saturday 
Night," and consumed many entire nights by the judicial lamp 
without a moment of repose. I often tried to abdicate, but 
was always overruled, until the ist of April, 1843, when the 
Governor again declining to accept my tendered resignation 
I filed it myself in his office, and left the bench. I thus un- 
expectedly and unwillingly devoted nearly fifteen years of 
the prime of my life to incessant and self-sacrificing labor on 
the Appellate bench, and resumed my mental and locomo- 
tive liberty, poor and fifty-two years old. All I am now 
worth, and much more given to my children and paid for 
friends, I have made by a voluntarily limited practice of the 
law for about twelve years since 1843, havinj chosen almost 
total retn-ement for the last six years. 

How I discharged my judicial duties, my reported opinions 
may partially serve to show; and how my professional func- 
tions, the public verdict will decide. All I can say is that in 
these, as well as in all my other relations of public and pri- 
vate life, I have studied only my duty, and faithfully tried to 
do it to the full measure of my abilities. 

During my service on the Bench I could have been elected 
to the United States Senate twice beyond question, if I had 



6o LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



consented ; and on another occasion I would have been 
elected without my knowledge had not my brother-in law 
(Letcher) withdrawn my name from the balloting, after which 
J. T. Morehead was elected. At another time, in 1846, Ex- 
Gov. Letcher and Judge Underwood being rival candidates, 
I was urged by many prominent members of the Legislature 
to allow my name to be put in as a pis allcr, after many 
unsuccessful ballotings between the two principal candidates. 
And some of the friends of both of them visited me and 
assured me that Underwood, desiring me to be nominated, 
would withdraw and secure my election if I would only con- 
sent to a nomination. I refused, however, unless Letcher 
also would withdraw. This he refused to do, and thereby 
weakened himself and strengthed Underwood, who was there- 
fore finally elected. I had no reason to doubt that, if Letcher 
had acceded to the proposed compromise, I would have been 
elected una voce. 

In 1848 I was elected to the State Legislature by the peo- 
ple of Fayette, without solicitation and against my will. 
During the succeeding session the non-importation act of 
1733 was substantially repealed. I spoke and voted against 
the repeal. In that speech I uttered my sentiments on the 
policy of non-importation of slaves into Kentucky, on aboli- 
tion and emancipation, and also on slavery itself, and the 
proper mode of treating it. And to prevent injurious agita- 
tion and secure peace and stability, I suggested the propriety 
of embodying in the Constitution the principle and policy of 
non-importation. 

On my return home after the close of the session, I was 
urged by all parties to be a candidate for the Convention 
which had been called by the popular vote against my coun- 
sel and vote. Knowing from the temper of the times that 
the new would be worse than the old Constitution, I preferred 
to be no actor in the body that would be responsible for the 
deterioration. But, submitting to the tJien manifest choice of 
my fellow citizens, I consented to be announced as a candi- 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 6 1 



date. Not long afterwards, and before there was any other 
candidate, Mr. Clay's letter in favor of emancipation was 
published, and Robt. J. Breckinridge and many others in 
Fayette, presuming on Mr. Clay's co-operation, stirred the 
question of emancipation as the controlling consideration in 
the election of delegates to the Convention. The agitation 
became intense and pervading until, degenerating into a 
stultifying mania, it produced fanatical coalitions between 
pro-slavery Whigs and Democrats and emancipation Whigs 
and Democrats, who assembled in separate and stormy con- 
ventions, each of which, in a whirlwind of passion, nominated 
a Whig and a Democrat as their antagonistic candidates tor 
the Co^'nvention. The leaders of the pro-slavery party urged 
me to be one of their candidates, and offered me the nomi- 
nation on condition that I would waive my policy as to 
non-importation being imbedded in the Constitution. This 
I peremptorily declined, as I did also overtures from the other 
combination to consent to be placed on their ticket. Thus 
threatened to be overwhelmed by two mountain waves, be- 
tween .vhich I stood alone as a committed candidate, my 
personal interest and comfort would have induced my indig- 
nant ^^•ithdrawal, had I felt free to consult my own ease and 
inclination. But, assured that I was right, and that a large 
majority of the people of Fayette had stood, and, when 
rational and deliberate, would again stand on my platform 
as to slavery and the principles of a new Constitution, I felt 
it my public duty, on an occasion so eventful, to meet the 
issue and try to quell the storm and save the country from 
political revolution and from the curse of such a Constitution 
as I foreboded from that agitation, and as it has imposed on 
us and our children. The programme I advocated may be 
seen in a handbill preserved among my papers. During the 
discussions on the stump I became reassured that a large 
majority of the people of Fayette concurred with me, and 
that, if many of those committed in their coalition conven- 
tions could emancipate themselves, I would be elected. 



62 LIFE OF GEORGE ROPERTSON. 

Robert J. Breckinridge as a Whig, and Samuel Shy as a 
Democrat were the caucus candidates for the emancipation 
party, and A. K. Woolley, Whig, and R. N. Wickhffe, 
Democrat, were the nominees of the ultra-pro-slavery junto. 
Most, probably all, of the Whig emancipationists preferred 
me to Shy, and all the pro-slavery Whigs preferred me to 
Wickliffe; but many of these felt handcuffed by their hasty 
agency in the adulterous nominations, and not a few who 
were anxious to assert their independence, were prevented 
by importunity and indifference. I heard it often asserted 
that Breckinridge urged Whig emancipationists to vote for 
Shy, and told them not to vote for him, if they ivould vote 
for me. And by this clerical indoctrination, some of my 
warmest personal and political friends were induced to vote 
against me. Similar means had the like effect on pro-slavery 
Whigs. In addition to all these unpropitious embarrass- 
ments, the fact that I liad no associate in the canvass operated 
powerfully against me by necessitating a division of my votes 
among my adversaries, and thus requiring for my success 
nearly double as much strength as that of either of the op- 
posing candidates. 

Had I been before eitlier of the caucus candidates when 
the polls were announced at one o'clock the first day of the 
election, mv election would have been sure; but at that crit- 
ical time the two belligerent tickets were side by side, and I 
was a little behind. This accident I considered as decisive 
of my fate, and, having told m}- friends so, most of them 
afterwards voted for one of the other tickets. Had not 
Samuel Bullock, who had agreed to be an associate candidate 
on my platform, died before the election, I would have been 
elected, or, with all the disadvantage of running alone, 
Breckinridge and myself would have been elected, if he had 
conducted the canvass impartially. But his misdirected 
course against me, which I will not here theorise, expose, 
or describe, defeated himself and helped to beat me. 

In the canvass I told the people that no emancipationist. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. ' 



unless possibly Breckinridge, would be elected, and also that 
even if every emancipation candidate in the State should be 
elected, that party would be in so small a minority in the 
Convention as to be unable to do anything for emancipation. 
And after elaborate discussion on emancipation, all over the 
county, between Breckinridge and myself, in which I en- 
deavored to prove, and thought that I had proved, the 
impolicy of agitating the question before the people, ' or in 
the Convention, seeming to be persuaded of its impolicy, he 
declared publicly at Elkhorn precinct, just before the elec- 
tion, that if elected he would not only )wt move emancipation, 
but would vote against it, if moved in the Convention by any 
other member. And I predicted that the indiscreet and 
premature agitation of an enterprise so impracticable and 
disquieting would aggravate and prolong slavery, and throw 
into the Convention a crude and effervescing material which 
would curse us with the worst constitution in the Union; and 
such already is felt to be the result; but popular ebullition 
was too strong for reason or sober deliberation. And my 
course in the canvass, and the causes of my defeat not being 
understood out of Fayette, my unexpected failure made 
many persons elsewhere suspect that I was unpopular at 
home, or was unsound on the subject of slavery. I have 
ever since suffered greatly from this ignorant and unjust prej- 
udice. Never soliciting office, and Ion- preferring the pursuits 
of private life, I have had neither suitable occasion nor actu- 
ating motive for altogether rectifying that unreasonable 
misconception, for uhich nothing in my history or in my 
many speeches and writings on slavery in all its phases, 
affords any semblance of excuse. 

Had I been in the Convention, the Constitution as it is 
might never have been adopted ; and had my warnings been 
heeded, or my uniform policy observed, abolitionists, free- 
soilers, and secessionists would never have disturbed the 
fraternity of the State, or jeoparded the Union. 

In December, 1834, I accepted the professorship of Con< 



64 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

stitutional Law, Equity, and International Law, public and 
private, and, on the 4th of July, 1835, I settled in Lexington, 
where I still reside. The professorship I retained until 
1858, where I helped to make more than twelve hundred 
lawyers, scattered over the United States, but principally 
over the Western, Southern, and Northwestern States and 
Territories. They left me all right in fundamental politics; 
and many of them have become distinguished jurists and 
statesmen, occupying high places at the bar, on the bench, 
and in the Legislative councils. State and National. For the 
labor and privation encount-^red in their tutelage I feel more 
than compensated by the assuring hope that the seed I sowed 
will, by its wholesome fructification, help to save our institu- 
tions and bless our posterity. 

Poverty and domestic obligations ha\'ing compelled me to 
resign my seat in Congress, and m}' reluctant and gainless 
devotion to the bench afterwards for nearly fifteen years of 
the prime of my manhood, having left me poor, I had, when 
I resigned the Chief Justiceship of Kentucky, no other con- 
sistent option than to try, by the practice of the law, to 
acquire an humble competence for the independence and 
comfort of my family; and this I had not attained before 
about the year 185 i. Consequently, whatever my personal 
preference may ha\e been, I could not have consistently quit 
m}' profession for any political post, even the National Sen- 
ate, which I would have preferred to an\- other. 

This sense of paramount duty to my family induced me 
to decline the offer of an election to the United States Sen- 
ate and of other preferment more than once. But when I had 
reached a condition of life which would have made the Sen- 
ate eligible to me, I was voted for on two occasions in 185 i, 
without my solicitation and without my interference in any 
way, and would, nevertheless, have been elected either 
time had not untoward accidents prevented. I was then a 
member of the Kentucky Legislature. I was urged to be 
Speaker, which I declined. My nephew, G. R, McKee, 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 6$ 

then became a candidate, with some other friends, who pre- 
ferred me for the Senate. After many exciting ballots the 
House adjourned without an election. Fearful of a dis- 
ruption by this hopeless antagonism of friends, our party 
nominated and elected me against my will, as a peace-offer- 
ing, and the effect on me was to make all the aspirants to the 
chair, except my nephew, violently adverse to my election to 
the Senate. In addition to this Mr. Crittenden, then a mem- 
ber of Mr. Fillmore's cabinet, and not believed to be a 
candidate for the Senate, was urged for an election by a few 
of his admirers. His friends were generally mine, and, had 
not his name been thus unfortunately used without his known 
sanction, my election was sure, notwithstanding the loss re- 
sulting from the Speakership. I was not, and refused to be, 
a candidate, but had said that if spontaneously chosen, I 
would not decline the call. I was opposed to the use of his 
name, which was persistently made against the judgment of 
all his discreet friends, and I announced, at once, that I could 
not co-operate in any such unauthorized effort, which I con- 
sidered, as it turned out, injurious to him, and unjust, as it 
certainly was, to other citizens who had been fighting for 
him and for conservatism for many years, without any pre- 
ferment. And, accordingly, I did not vote for him. This 
alienated his friends from me, and made most of them, even 
my own Senator, zealous and active against me during the 
entire session of that Legislature. 

Mr. Crittenden, Mr. Dixon, and myself were voted for. 
After several ballots, in which I was well sustained, seeing 
that the contest was degenerating into a fatal split of our 
party, I had my name withdrawn in defiance of earnest re- 
monstrances by many of my friends. Between Crittenden 
and Dixon the balloting was continued for many days, some 
members, who were opposed to both of them, putting up a 
third man on each successive ballot. At last, our party be- 
ing in imminent danger of dissolution, Mr. C. and Mr. D. 
were both withdrawn, and a caucus assembled to select a 
4 



66 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



candidate. Some of the members who were excited against 
me arranged a platform which would be most likely to de- 
feat the strongest man — which was, that every member 
mip-ht nominate whom he desired, and that no nominee 
should be preferred until he had, successively, beaten every 
other. To illustrate the effect of that programme, we may 
suppose that every letter in the alphabet w^as in nomination 
(and it was in this case nearly so). A would be ahead at 
the first ballot; then he would have to run against B, for 
whom all or nearly all the friends of the other nominees 
would vote for the purpose of breaking A down ; then B 
would have to run against C, who would, in the same way, 
beat him ; and so on, the same result would follow until Z 
would beat Y ; then Z would run against A, who, of course, 
would in like manner beat him ; and so the same farce would 
be repeated. And just so it was in this instance. On the 
first ballot I Avas foremost; C. S. Morehead w^as next; he 
then beat me, and himself was beaten, as others were suc- 
cessively until John B. Thompson, who was the lowest on 
the first ballot, was ahead; I then beat Jiim; and the same 
round was run again, with the same results, until eight of 
my friends, despairing of any conclusion of such a farce, left 
the scene. After they had gone a third round was com- 
menced between Thompson and me, when, as I believe from 
various information, I beat him again. But the chairman 
(my Senator) declared him nominated. Many members re- 
monstrated, and denied, moreover, that he could, even had 
he beaten me, be nominated until he had beaten every other 
competitor: But the chairman persisted, and adjourned the 
meeting in a storm of clamor, declaring that Thompson was 
nominated. This having gotten out, it was thought best not 
to attempt to correct the blunder; and, in this way, Thomp- 
son, who was the weakest in the race, was made the Senator. 
There was no doubt that I, in a fair trial, would have been 
nominated and elected. 

After that abortion, Mr. Clay having resigned, Dixon, 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 6/ 



Morehead, and myself were put up for the succession ; and 
the members, sick of the first ridiculous programme, resolved 
to have no caucus, but vote in the Legislature as between 
those who should be nominated there. The opposing minor- 
ity being strong enough to prevent the election of a Whig as 
long as more than one Whig was running, our party resolved 
secretly to begin to drop the hindmost on the fifth ballot. 
The Democrats ran James Guthrie to embarrass the election 
and insure the election of a Whig whom they preferred. 
With the exception of about one-fifth of them, they preferred 
me ; and, understanding that on some ballot unknown to 
them, the hindmost would be dropped, they intended to vote 
for me on that ballot. But my friend who was chosen to 
give them notice when the ballot had come, was accidentally 
out when it arrived, and the Democrats still voted for Guth- 
rie, but Morehead's friends of the Democratic party (about 
seven), understanding when the trial ballot came, voted for 
Jiiin; and two of my Whig voters being accidentally out on 
that ballot, I was dropped by one vote ! My election was 
considered certain by all who knew the determination of a 
large majority of the. Democrats, and my failure was almost 
miraculous. The following letter, published in a Maysville 
paper, and which was evidently written by some friend who 
knew the facts, will explain this affair correctly: 

JUDGE ROBERTSON AND THE SENATORIAL ELECTION. 
We have been furnished bv a citizen of Maysville. the following extract 
from a letter from his correspondent at Frankfort, explaining the influences 
and accidents, according to the view of the writer, by which the election 
of Judge Robertson as a Senator of the United States to succeed Henry 
Clay, resigned, was prevented. We comply with the request for its pub- 
lication, because, notwithstanding the election resulted in favor of another, 
the facts stated are interesting in themselves. 

Judge Robertson is, unquestionably, a citizen whose peculiar qualities 
eminently fit him for the grave and dignified post of Senator in Congress 
His intellect, giant-like in proportions and powers; a statesman, liberal, 
comprehensive and national in his views; a jurist, learned, able and pro- 
found; a citizen of ripe experience in all the diversified walks of public 
service; ever pure and sell-sacrificing in his patriotism; a scholar and a 
gentleman of spotless private life; with such qualifications, Judge Robert- 



68 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



son, had he been chosen a Senator of the United States, would have 
discharged the duties of the high station with credit to himself, with honor 
to Kentucky, and with eminent advantage to the Union. On entering 
that illustrious body, he would, by the force of his character and intellect, 
have immediately taken rank in the very lirst line of American statesmen- 
The cast and mould of his mind are peculiarly Judicial and Senatorial; 
and we should deem the country fortunat e yet should it secure his services 
in the Supreme Court or in the Senate of the United States. 
But to the letter — here is the extract: 

"You expressed a hope that Judge Robertson's 'luck' would be better on 
the late than it was on the former occasion. It was not much better. 
Your members did not vote for Robertson — not one of them. Had they, 
or any of them, voted for him, he would have been elected. The hot 
Crittenden men — the most of thetn — (including Robertson's own Senator, 
and some others who had, at the beginning of the session, avowed them- 
selves for him against Crittenden himself) all proscribed him only because 
he voted for Dixon ! Still he would have been elected had not a singular 
accident "occurred. Morehead had no chance, because all Robertson's 
votes except three were for Dixon next; so that, out of seventy-five Whig 
votes, Morehead could not get more than twenty- two against Dixon. 
The secret agreement among the Whigs was to begin on the fifth ballot to 
drop the hindmost. Robertson ran ahead of Morehead on the first four 
ballots, and would have done it also on the fifth by an increased majority, 
but on the decisive fifth. Morehead got five Democratic votes, and was thus 
thrown one vote ahead of Robertson, who. notwithstanding the five Demo- 
cratic votes, would have been several votes ahead of Morehead, had not 
Dr. Burnet and several other Democrats, all anxiously awaiting to cast the 
test-vote, which thev were determined to do for Robertson, been acci- 
dentally misinformed as to the proper time, and in that way held to Guthrie 
until R"obertson was unexpectedly dropped by one vote. Had Robertson 
beaten Morehead on that ballot, "as he could nave done easily, his election 
was considered certain by his Ovvn friends, as well as by the best informed 
of Dixon's. He would, o"n the next ballot, have received, as against Dixon, 
all of Morehead's votes excep-; about three, which would have made his 
Whig vote equal or perhaps about two more than Dixon's; and there is no 
doubt that he zvould have received a large majority oj the Democratic 
votes"' 

I never, either before or since, sought the place, pleasant 
and eligible as it might have been to me ; and although I 
have more than once been voted fo r, I was never a candidate 
for it or uttered a word or did an act to obtain it. Nor, 
while I have resigned high public posts and declined the ac- 
ceptance of many others spontaneously tendei-ed to me, did I 
ever apply for or in any way seek official promotion, I 
would not feel honored by the highest station unless it seeks 
me and comes sua spontc. 

My retirement from political life has been both voluntary 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 69 



and cheerful ; and I have enjo}^ed it without envy or regret. 
No disappointment has corroded my peace ; no sense of un- 
just pretermission or neglect has made me either cynical or 
resentful. Whatever may have been my position or personal 
fortune, I have, without the slightest deflection, been always 
true to the same principles, and have never faltered in 
humble efforts in my sphere to rectify the popular mind, 
regulate the popular will, and promote the welfare of my 
country. And I hope to die in the assurance that, whilst 
my position in the public eye, and my unpatronized personal 
power have not enabled me to do or to be all I wished, I 
have nevertheless done the State some service, and my coun- 
trymen some good, that will last and fructify long after my 
name may be forgotten. 



70 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



CHAPTER VI. 
Concerning my personal character and habits I will add 
only a few words. 

When I married I was five feet ten inches high, and 
weighed only 1 26 pounds ; at 30 years of age my weight was 
200 pounds, at which it continued nearly stationary until 
lately; it is now (i 6th November, 1863) 240 pounds. Or- 
ganically sound and temperate in all things, I have, ever 
since my 17th year, enjoyed unsurpassed health of body and 
mind. During the last 56 years of my life I have abstained 
from medicine, and relied on the vis, mcdkatnx naturae. 
When out of order my remedy has been abstinence and qui- 
escence. Since my marriage I have never feh a symptom of 
headache or any cerebral excitement. My only maladies 
have been a chronic inflammation of the schnyderian mem- 
brane degenerating into nasal polypus, and a local eruption 
on the skin, which I have considered an efflorescence of a 
scrofulous taint. With these exceptions my physical health 
is robust and perfect. And I have the comforting conviction 
that, with a sound body, I am still blessed with a sound 
ri\md—iihiis Sana in corporc sano. In my own judgment, my 
intellectual faculties, though sobered and mellowed by the 
autumn of age, are as strong and as clear as ever, with the 
exception only of a slight decay or absence of memory ; and 
this impairment I ascribe more to tobacco' than to senility. 
Since my early manhood I have used this narcotic in the 
double form of chewing and smoking. Conscious that the 
habit was vulgar, inconvenient, and often hurtful, I frequently 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 71 



■denied myself for months, and without much sense of priva- 
tion ; but finding that I increased in fat, I as often resumed 
the use of the stimulant. And I yet persist in the prudent 
and temperate use of it, not so much as an exhilerant or sed- 
ative, as a medicine to prevent nausea, neutrahze malaria, 
and restrain a constitutional tendency to oppressive corpu- 
lence. 

My passions were strong and vehement; but I soon ac- 
quired habitual control over all of them. My temperament 
was bilious, but was generally considered rather phlegmatic, 
because a supreme will of self-denial restrained and generally 
subjugated feelings that were sometimes almost volcanic, and, 
without extraordinary power of self control and constant 
vigilance and discipline, would often have exploded with 
eruptive violence. 

I never fell from self-poised uprightness, and I was never 
guilty of an act of incontinence. And, while ambitious of 
the fame that follows worth, I never sought it by the vulgar 
means by which meretricious notoriety has, in all time, been 
easily acquired by selfish mediocrity, impudent upstartism, 
and suppliant prostitution. I never had any prurience for 
office or place, and never held one with self-satisfaction. My 
sentiment has ever been, that he who deserves an office 
would do better without it; and that every one who seeks 
or accepts a trust for which he is not qualified, is guilty of 
incivism and makes himself ridiculous. And I have always 
admired the maxim illustrated by Epaminondas and Wash- 
ington, that place does not honor the incumbent, but the 
incumbent the place; and that the place should' seek the 
man, and not the man the place. And my practice of this 
doctrine is the only reason why retirement has so long blessed 
my domestic peace. I have more than once declined a seat 
on the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
seat in the cabinet, and foreign missions, tendered to me 
without solicitation. 

I know all the highways and byways which successful as- 



72 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

pirants travel to spurious honor. But rather than tread those 
crooked paths, I feel with Pope, that "the post of honor is 
a private station." And this, therefore, has been my fortune 
for years, and must continue with my life, unless unexpect- 
edly I shall be called to some public service neither solicited 
nor desired. 

Since my advent to the bar, forensic, political, and judicial 
intrusions on my time have not allowed me secure and set- 
tled relaxation sufficient for methodical study. My reading, 
though varied and extensive, has necessarily been rather mis- 
cellaneous and scattered. My political principles, matured 
and settled before I was elected to Congress, are national and 
conservative. They have never been changed in any essen- 
tial particular, and have, under all circumstances and in every 
instance, guided my political conduct. 

For the last seven years I have studied Theology more 
than all other subjects. The Bible has been my vade mcawi, 
aided by collateral illustrations, — geological, metaphysical, 
and historical, — and by exegetical speculations — didactic and 
polemical. I have not studied as a rationalist in either the 
dogmatic or scholastic sense. But, within the limited sphere 
of human power, reason has guided me to my conclusions, 
so as to make the Bible harmonize in all its parts and exhibit 
a simple, rational, and God-like system, free from the mys- 
ticism and incongruities of the sects and the schools, and 
relieved of most of its imputed mysteries. Still God is a 
mystery ; life, both animal and vegetable, is a mystery ; mind 
is a mystery ; even matter and its laws are mysteries. Here 
philosophy, guided by intuition and confirmed by faith con- 
sistent with reason, though beyond its range, is our only 
guide. And on this foundation I build my theory as to 
Ontology, Theosophy, and the connection between an om- 
nipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent Spirit, and the 
subordinate and illimitable universe of matter and mind. 
My process results in the explosion of hylozoic or material 
pantheism, of the scholastic doctrines of the fall, of original 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 73 



sin, imputed righteousness and imputed sin, of the incarna- 
tion and crucifixion of God as expiatory instead oi propitiatojy, 
the garden of Eden, the serpent, and the trees of life and 
of the knowledge of good and evil, and predestination, elec- 
tion, and necessitarianism. This is not the proper place for 
a full discussion of these topics, or even for a statement of 
my views in respect to any of them. If time be allowed to 
me I may hereafter write something more explicit and satis- 
factory. I will only say now that my theories, if generally 
known and adopted, would rectify many errors in dogmatic 
orthodoxy, exalt our conceptions of God and man, cor^mend 
the pure Christianity of Love, remove its many stumbling- 
blocks, and soon renovate society and evangelize the world. 
And I presume to add, that my interpretation of the Bible is 
not only consistent with, but is required by, its context and 
pervading spirit as an inspired whole. 

My habits have always been self-denying, and my tastes 
domestic. Prudence and a supreme love for a comfortable 
and independent mediocrity of fortune constrained me to for- 
bear habitually the gratification of incompatible personal and 
social tastes. I have been careful to apply my personal 
means to objects the most essential. I would even wear old 
clothes when I had not the money in hand to buy new ones 
without neglecting more essential uses of it. But whenever 
I had money not needed for more useful and important ob- 
jects, I used it freely for the gratification of my own taste or 
that of my family and friends. Ever since I was 25 years 
old I took care to have always some money on hand, so as 
to feel free and independent. I was always punctual in 
fulfilling my contracts, and all my engagements and appoint- 
ments. And my systematic and self denying economy— 
never degenerating into parsimony— enabled me to live as 
well as any rational man would ever desire, and to appro- 
priate to public and private charities and social benefactions 
often more, but never less, than five hundred dollars a year. 
My wife, very domestic and excellent in household manage- 



74 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

ment, was also prudently economical, but far from being 
selfish or sordid. Her domestic cares and housewifery were 
never directed or intruded on by me. She was enthroned as 
queen of the house, — kitchen, parlor, and all — and in that 
sphere her will was my law. I never either dictated or com- 
plained of her household administration, or directed or 
objected to any expenditure she ever made for her person, 
her house, or her table. 

When business did not call me away, I staid at home 
habitually and with but few exceptions, and was seldom ab- 
sent at night. 

My habit of writing, like that of reading, was rapid and 
irregular. Whatever I wrote was accomplished per saltern, 
and without copying or much revision. I wTote with too 
much celerity. Even my judicial opinions, though well 
considered and matured before I put pen to paper, were 
written cwrente calanio, so as to finish in an hour what might 
prudently have occupied a whole day. As an illustration, I 
will only say that the opinion in the perpresture case of L. 
and O. R. R. vs. Applegate, &c., covering twenty-two pages 
in 8th Dana's Reports, was written out from beginning to 
end in six hours. The duties of the Appellate bench, when 
I was upon it, were exceedingly onerous, and required ex- 
traordinary dispatch to avoid vexatious delays. Anxious to 
keep up with the docket, I have often labored at the oar all 
night; and, whether at home or at court, I seldom enjoyed 
even the rest of one Sabbath day for nearly fifteen years. 
My labors were constant ahd herculean. And I regret that 
I permitted my anxiety for the dispatch of justice to jeopard 
my health, disturb my comfort, and subject my judicial rep- 
utation to unnecessary criticism. 

And now, on my 73d anniversary, I would close this mea- 
ger sketch. It is possible, if I live much longer, that I may 
not only revise and correct, but enlarge it. However this 
may be, I desire that some surviving friend, who knows me 
well, will, after I ta':e my leave of earth, fill up the outline I 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



75 



leave behind, and furnish a fuller and more complete biogra- 
phy than I ought to, if I could, write of myself And such 
a memoir I wish published, together with the revised con- 
tents of my "Scrap Book," and with the addition of all 
other documents I may leave marked for that end in my 
portfolio. And the entire work, cost what it may, I require 
to be done in the best typographical style of the very best 
American publisher, with the best style of paper, and my 
autograph and photograph prefixed. All this I desire, not 
in a vain hope of posthumous fame, but in the belief that 
it may be my best legacy to my descendants, useful to 
surviving friends, and of some service to my succeedino- 
countrymen. 



•J^ LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



CHAPTER VII. 

August 30th, 1865. 
On the 13th of January, 1865, my admirable and devoted 
wife died of pneumonia, and on the 25th of the same month 
she was removed from the home she had so long graced, and 
was laid side by side with our darling son George, in our 
vault in the Lexington cemetery, where I expect soon to 
join them and repose, dust to dust, until the eventful day of 
the restitution of all things, when I hope we shall all, with 
other kindred, once more and forever live together in the 
brighter and happier home of all those most sorely tried on 
Earth to be blessed in Heaven. After a most happy and 
endearing cohabitation for more than fifty-five years, which 
had cemented us as one, this last and severest of all my 
many afflictive bereavements, like the separation of the soul 
and the body, has overwhelmed my manhood and left me, 
in old age, desolate, cheerless, and hopeless of earthly hap- 
piness. Uncommonly beautiful in early life, and always 
modest, neat, and truthful, devoted to home and fond of do- 
mestic cares and employments, my lost partner was a model 
wife, mother, mistress, and friend — conspicuous in all the 
virtues and feminine graces which most adorn and dignify 
womanhood. The memory of a woman so admirable and 
true, deserves the first place in this brief memorial of her 
husband, begun and nearly finished when he hoped that she 
would survive to close his eyes and embalm him with her 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. // 



affectionate tears. Therefore, in the discharge of this sacred 
duty, mournfully left peculiarly and impressively for him, he 
cannot do less than to place her by his side by transcribing 
herein the following short and imperfect, but, as far as it 
goes, true and faithful obituary by her oldest son : — 

OBITUARY. 

Aftection and justice alike prompt this brief memorial of a more than 
friend bj one who knew and loved her long and well. 

ELEANOR J. BAINBRIDGE— born on lake Seneca, New York, 
April the 27th, 1794— was the daughter of Dr. Peter Bainbridge, an 
eloquent Baptist minister and eminent physician, and of Eleanor James 
McIntosh, only daughter of Gen. Alexander McIntosh, of the Revo- 
lution, a wealthy planter of South Carolina. Both parents were of 
Scotch descent. 

Dr. Bainbridge settled in Lancaster, Ky., in the year 1799, where, on 
the 2Sth day of November, 1S09, Eleanor, then only fifteen years and five 
months old, was married to George Robertson, whose age was nine- 
teen years and ten days. They commenced their married life with no 
other fortune than the natural gifts with which God had blessed them. 
By habits of rare industry, prudence, and self-denial, they lived prosper- 
ously and happily together for fifty-live years, one month, and sixteen 
days; when, on the 13th ol January, 1S65, after an illness of nine days, 
she died of Pneumonia, at their residence in Lexington, Ky., whither they 
had removed on the 4th of July, 1S35. 

They had ten children, five of each sex; only one-half of them survived 
their mother, who left them and a large number of grandchildren and 
great-grand children, to mourn their irreparable loss, and imitate her 
precious example as wife, mother, Christian, friend. 

Her neatness, modesty, justice, and high regard for truth, won the es- 
teem and love of all who knew her well. Whatever her husband has 
accomplished is due as much to her untiring energy and faithful co-opera- 
tion as to his own exertions. 

In early life, the beauty of her lace and form was of the highest order; 
and she retained her fine mold, and expression, her activity and maiden 
erectness to the last. She was resigned to death, only wishing to live 
longer (or her husband, whom she grieved to leave alone, in his old age^ 
hopeless of earthly comfort. In the year 1S26 she became a member of 
the Presbyterian Church, and a perfect knowledge of her meek and steady 
faith and consistent life, gives full assurance to her family that she has 
entered upon that eternal rest which remains for the people of God. 

It is but a just tribute to her memory to publish herewith the following 
extract from a letter of condolence to her husband, from one of the purest 
and most distinguished of the public men of Kentucky, who knew her 



78 LIFE OF GEORGE ROPERTSON. 

from her girlhood to her death. After alluding to the intelligence of her 
death, he sajs: 

"What a rush of recollections the sad event has driven through my 
mind. We were schoolmates at Lancaster, -aihen the most beautiful Elleit 
Baiuhridge xvas just budding into ivojuanhood — the admired and beloved 
of all her associates. Ho7v gracefullv and perfectly she performed every 
dutv of a ivi/e, 1 well knew from observations when a guest in vour hos- 
pitable mansion. You and Ellen lived together truly as one, more than 
half a century. Your loss is irreparable on earth. Hope of a re-union in 
Heaven is the only ground of consolation. I mourn with you. I find that 
the world, to me, contains one friend less; and those of my years have 
none to spare. 

" We have spent so many days with each other as bo\'s and as men — 
associating as Legislators and as Judges, that I am sure you will not re- 
gard me as obtruding on your grief by expressing my heartfelt sympathy 
in your bereavement." 

And all who knew her as well as this good and accomplished man, 
would concur in his testimony of her worth. With such memorials, her 
name, her virtues, and her model life, will long be embalmed in the hearts 
of her many descendants and friends. A SON. 

And, as our youngest son, who was her idol and whose 
death she constantly mourned to the last, lies entombed by 
her side, I choose, as befitting and ju.st, to transmit them 
together by copying the following slight biographical sketch 
of himand paternal monody, addressed to his departed spirit 
eight years ago: 

MEMORIAL OF GEORGE ROBERTSON, JR. 

My youngest child — a son — was born in Lexington, Ky., 
on the 1 2th of May, 1838, when his mother was 45 years 
old and I was in the 48th year of my age. My family wished 
to name him George ; but as I had lost two sons of that 
name, they were prevented by a superstitious apprehension 
from giving that unlucky name, and called him by the pseu- 
donym, Boson. But when, in his seventh year, he was asked 
for his name by his first teacher, he answered, George ; and 
thus he named himself, and that nomination was ratified by 
our family, and ever afterwards recognized, though at home 
he was generally called and known by the first imputed name, 
''Boson." 

In form and expression he was remarkably handsome, 
even beautiful. And no son was ever more filial, docile, or 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. ng 



affectionate. He was the pride and hope of the family, and 
was favorably observed by all who saw, and beloved by all 
who knew him. Though indulged in all his tastes and de- 
sires, he never became infected with an immoral principle, or 
acquired a bad habit. He was always as amiable and gentle 
as a lamb, and as generous as the sun. And if he ever ut- 
tered an impudent word, did an ungenerous act, or cherished 
an unkind feeling, I never heard of it. He was devoted to 
his parents, and distinguished for his attachment to his broth- 
ers and sisters and their children ; and we were all peculiarly 
devoted to him. Among his various graces he had exquis- 
ite taste for music, and played very sweetly on the violin. 

In robust health, he was sent, in September, ^855, to 
Mr. Sayre's select school at Frankfort, when, either from 
accident or severe exercise, he had, on one occasion, in De- 
cember, a slight hemorrhage from the lungs; and exposure 
to cold at home during the succeeding Christmas holidays 
brought on a severe attack of pneumonia, from the effects of 
which, although for some time he appeared to be relieved, 
he never recovered. For some months he manifested symp- 
toms of bronchial inflammation, and we were apprehensive 
that, from sympathy or otherwise, his lungs were in danger; 
but I never believed that they were fatally or essentially 
diseased. He was prudent and careful in the use of all res- 
torative means, and in the autumn of 1856 he was increasing 
in flesh and strength, seemed restored to healthful appetite 
and digestion, could take his accustomed exercise in the air 
on foot and on horseback, and up hill and down hill, without 
apparent fatigue or inconvenience, and his blooming color 
was rapidly returning to his cheeks. We thought he was 
almost out of danger, and he thought so too. Expecting to 
go with his mother South in a few days, he went down hUo 
the city on the evening of Thursday, the i ith of December, 
1856, and bought a new black coat and some other things,' 
preparatory to his contemplated trip. The evening w^s damp 
and chilly, and he did not return until fifteen minutes after 



80 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

five o'clock, or nearly dark. We had several lady visitors 
that evening, for whom he played with admirable execution, 
at the request of one of them, "Old Folks at Home," and 
"Rural Felicity," in the order just stated ; and these were 
his last on earth. He then retired to his mother's chamber, 
in which he had been for some time sleeping; and, after 
cheerful conversation with Dr. Bell, undressed for bed about 
nine o'clock. He slept quietly until disturbed by our entry 
for the purpose of going to bed. He then conversed with 
his mother, and said he felt quite well. But shortly after- 
terwards he was disturbed by a cough, which continued at 
intervals, with increased violence, until about half-past four 
o'clock, when, after a severe paroxysm, he called his mother 
and told her he had coughed up some blood. She instantly 
arose and made two abortive efforts to make light. Seeing 
that she was agitated, he, sitting up' in his bed, instructed 
her how to use the match, whereby she succeeded in lighting 
a candle, when, with extreme trepidation, she ejaculated, 
"Yes, my son, you /laTi' thrown up blood." Whereupon he 
said, "Send for the doctor." While she was calling for a 
servant I went to our son, and as I approached him, still sit- 
ting, he said, " / cant get my breath f and these were his 
last words. Sinking into my arms he expired just as his 
mother re-entered and approached his bed. 

More surprise and grief were never felt or manifested than 
followed this terrible bereavement. Even Dr. Bell fell on 
the floor apparently dead, and cordial sympathy seemed to 
be universal, extending to the colored people, many of whom 
manifested deep sorrow. His devoted mother is even yet, 
eighteen months after the shock, crushed in body and mind, 
and feels hopeless of restoration of vigor to the one or cheer- 
fulness to the other. And my own condition is that of 
settled melancholy. Mournful memories haunt me wherever 
I may be, day and night, without intermission. It is idle to 
tell me this is wrong: I know it; but I cannot help it. No 
effort of philosophy or will which I can command affords any 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. Si 



essential or 2:)ermanent relief. I know that soon the 
separation would be inevitable under the most favorable cir- 
cumstances. And the fact that grief will not restore my 
loving son, wipes away no tears, but only makes them flow 
the faster. No father ever lost a son of more endearing 
graces, more suited to his tastes, or more needful to his de- 
clining life. Attractive traits of character, growing habits, 
cementing associations, and blasted hopes — all peculiar, in- 
communicable, and countless — combined to inflict a wound 
immedicable by human skill, or manly energy, or earthly 
hopes. 

I had lost father and mother, and brothers and sisters (all 
except one), and four interesting and lovely children, among 
whom was a daughter eighteen, and a son six years of age, 
and for each and all of these visitations I felt deeply and 
long, and yet daily feel transient sorrow ; but my last be- 
reavement has been and yet is, for nameless reasons, more 
afflictive than all that preceded it. Even yet my house looks 
desolate, and every thing in it suggests memories of my dear 
George. Rallying all my manhood, I try to be resigned ; 
but nature rebels, and I can only command apparent seren^ 
ity, without hope of cheerfulness or capacity for earthly 
enjoyment. I have exhausted philosophy. Faith in God 
and his salvation is the only hope, and, with vivid and assur- 
ing faith, I have not yet been comforted. I have long been 
striving for it, but have not yet been blessed with such as I 
feel to be vital and consolatory. 

George, though not nineteen years old, was nearly six feet 
high, of perfect form, and, when in good health, would have 
weighed one hundred and fort)'-fi\-e pounds. His hair was 
black and silk like; his eyes dark brown, beaming a benig- 
nity peculiarly af-.ractive ; his cheeks, when ruddy in health, 
were smooth, blushing, and redolent as the spring rose ; and 
his countenance was a mirror of the chasest emotions of the 
best and purest heart Had I the power, I would iiot have 
altered him in head, heart, or form. 
5 



82 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



After he died he was kept in our parlor, in an open me- 
talUc casket, until the 9th of January (one month), and was 
then, with the body of his nephew and companion, William 
R. Letcher, conveyed, side by side, in hearses followed by 
a long procession, to the Lexington cemetery, where their 
bodies were deposited and sleep together in death, as they 
walked together in life. They rest with my grand-daughter, 
Ellen M. TrOutman, in my family vault; and who will follow 
next and repose by their sides God only knows. 

As soon as I felt calm enough to write I composed a 

monody, addressed to my son, which was completed on the 

nineteenth anniversary of his birth, May 12th, 1857, and is 

transcribed into this little book. On a sober revision of it 

this day, I indorse every sentiment and fact it contains, and 

believe that, as far as it goes, it is a faithful portrait, without 

the exaggeration of panegyric or apparent bias. And it is a 

true, though imperfect, expression of the feelings of his 

crushed mother and saddened father. 

G. Robertson. 

April 16th, 1858. 

Lexington, Ky., May 12th, 1857. 
A FATHER'S ADDRESS TO HIS DEAD SON.^^ 



*Only about half of this mon.dy is here given. The other portions 
of it are an expansion or reiteration, in different form, of the same senti- 
ments. 

My son! my soul my youngest son! 

Of faultless mould and heart and form, 
Whose graces countless blessings won, 

Whose model life was cloudless morn. 

Mv son! my handsome, darling boy! 

Thy mother's pride, thy father's hope; 
Their prop, their comfort, and their joy, 

The star of their declining slope. 

Born late to bless their lonelv age, 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON, 83 



To grace their lioiue and cheer their hearth, 
To gild with light their closing page, 
And hallcAV their last da\s on earth. 

Benignant, lovely, free fioni strife, 
In noble manhood's flagrant dawn; 

In buoyant, blooming, hopeful life, 

Unwai'ned, from earth thy soul was drawn. 

With lightning speetl the message came, 
That called thee from thy mother's side. 

And stereotyped thy living na.me 
On hearts forgetless in Time's tide. 

Couldst thou have lived "till we had died, 
. To close thy dying parents' eyes, 
How blessed had been that eventide 
That cheerless now in sorrow dies. 

Last rose of Summer! Autumn's hope, 
Tiiat Autumn comes, and thou art s^one. 

And left old age liehind to grope 
A bloomless down-hill all alone. 

It childish innocence and love, 

Chaste life untinged with impure leaven. 
Might fit a soul for peace above. 

Thine rests, dear George, secure in heaven. 



t>^? 



Thy fiddle, tuneless, now alone. 

Thy clothes, thy letters, and thy books, 

Daily revive, with plaintive tone, 

Loved memories of thy ways ami looks. 

'Where'er we go, whate'er we see. 

Chairs, tables, halls, and pcnch and gate; 

All, all we meet, remind of thee. 

And seem to weep our mournful fate: 

At morning, noon, and solemn night. 
Thy cheerless parents, sitlc In' side. 
Fill with their sighs, for lost delight. 



84 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



The room where thou tvert bor>i — and died. 

Our house, now silent as thy tonih; 

Our hearth, bereft of all its glee; 
So cheerful once! all draped in gloom, . 

Have lost their life enshrined with thee. 

Now home, dear spot with magnet sure. 

Charmed sanctuary, sacred shrine 
Of love and peace and virtue pure, 

And tranquil joys almost divine: 

That home thy presence- made so sweet, 

Is cheerful home. "Sweet Home,'' no more; 

Its desolations now we meet 
In every room, at every door. 

To deeply mourn for such a loss. 
Which nothing earthly can supply, 

Is nature's cry at nature's cross. 
Love planted here to melt and try. 

Philosophy cannot console. 

And time alone can cicatrize, 
But faith may heavenly love unroll. 

And trust in God may harmonize. 

This ofrievous stroke of chastening love 
Melts all our hearts and weans from lust. 

And calls us loud to look a1)ove 
For hopeful rising from the dust. 

No lonaei" here we love to btav, 

Our path so dark, our time so short. 

We lono- to find the narrow wav 

That leads bruis'd hearts to heaven's safe pcHt. 

Thy sudden death has proved how frail. 
How fleeting all things here below; 

Then, \vhile our loss we iiinst bewail, 
We pray for blessings from the blow. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. ' 85 



May thv example, ne'er forgot, 

Drav/ us from worldly cares ami ties, 
And may it !>c our pleasing lot 

To rest our bodies where thine lies. 

Then — hard to say — Adieu, adieu! 

Till death shall come again to sever 
Thv parents from this footstool, too. 

And hrinsf ns all, and more, together. 

That hope is now the gleaming star 

To guide our tottering steps above. 
And lead us safely to that bar 

Where reign eternal light and love. 

For time, dear son ! a last farewell ! 

But to forget thee ? — never, ?iever/ 
Soon, how soon, we cannot tell. 

We'll meet again to live forever. 

(>' George Robertson. 

The following tribute to the memory of George Robert- 
son, Junior, was written by the widow of Col. Wm. R. 
McKee, who fell at Buena Vista: 

Better are the dead, which are ah-eady dead, than the living, which are 
yet alive, saith the voice of Divine Inspiration — yet seldom does the heart 
of the bereaved mourner respond to the sentiment. When the aged and 
wearv pilgrim sinks to his quiet resting place, we bow in silence to the 
mercv of Providence, and repine not at the dispensation. The bounds 
allotted to human existence have been enjoyed, and an extension of life 
would be an extension of misery. But far diflerent are the feelings called 
forth, when youth, and beauty, and strength are prostrated by the cold 
hand of death. Then it is that the heart, in its bitterness, exclaims: "Dark 
and mysterious are thy works, O, God! and thy ways past finding out.'' 
Thouo-h the mind may be chastened to endure, and tvery rebellious 
thought be subjected, yet sorrow is ours, and we are permitted to indulge 
it—it is not the otlspring of guilt, for He sorrowed who never knew sin. 

Such were the reflections which crowded upon us whilst contemplating 
the shrouded form of GEORGE ROBERTSON, Jr , and the tears 
which followed were allowed to ti w unchecked, for he was worthy of 
them. Friendship demands no lengthened tribute to the virtues of the 
deceased— his eulogy is already written on the hearts of all who knew him; 



85 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



and it needs not that we sift his ashes to seek for golden memories of his 
character, they were stamped on every page of his fleeting life. Possess- 
ing the vivacity of youth without its volatility; enjoying its pleasures 
without its dissipation; and using the world so as not to abuse it, he was 
at once an example to the young, and an object of admiration to the aged. 
But the silver cord has been loosed, and the golden bowl has been broken 
the dust has returned to the earth as it was, whilst the glorious consola- 
tion is ours, that his spirit has returned to God who gave it. M. 

Havine ten childi-en — five of each sex — we lost six of them 
in the following orcer: 

1. Our second son, Bainbridge, a large, grey-eyed child, 
born December 13th, 1822, and died February 9th, 1823. 

2. Our fifth daughter, Martha Jane, a beautiful and 
sprightly blue eyed girl, of fair skin, born July 24th, 1824, 
and died May 17th, 1826. 

3. George S. McKee, a black-eyed, handsome and prom- 
ising boy, born November 2d, 1827, and died December 
1 2th, 1832. 

4. Mary Oden Eppes, born May 5th, 181 5, and died of 
cholera Juno 20th, 1S33. She was the largest and most 
majestic in form and port of all the daughters. Admirable 
mould, fair skin, blue eyes, auburn hair, capacious head, and 
beaming face, combined to make her a favorite, and talents 
of a high grade assured a distinguished destiny, had she lived 
long enough to allow full development of the rare elements 
of her girlhood character and promise. Her premature 
death was a sad bereavement to her parents and other kin- 
dred and friends. Her remains, together with those of her 
sister Martha Jane, and her brothers Bainbridge and George 
S. McKee, were, in September, 1866, disinterred, and, in- 
closed in a common box, now rest with their mother in the 
family vault. 

All these births and deaths occurred in Lancaster, Ky. 

5. Our youngest child, George, already described, and 
who was born and died in the same room, in Lexington, Ky. 

6. James Bainbridge, of whom the following obituar}- \\\\\ 
present a condensed outline: 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. g/ 



AN HLISJBLE OFFERING AT THE SHRINE OF GENIUS. 

[From the Lexington Statesman.] 
The memory of JAMES BAINBRIDGE ROBERTSON, deceased, 
deserves more than an ordinary tribute of surviving affection His histo- 
ry may be useful to all young men of exuberant talents, and will exemplify 
the necessity of vigilant pilotage and stern self-control. 

Born in Lmcaster, Ky , on the 4th of October, 1S31, he died suddenlv, 
in the city of Lexington, on the night of the 27th of February, 1S67, leav- 
ing an admirable widow and an interesting daughter and son of rare 
promise. From his early boyhood he exhibited extraordinary talents of 
peculiar docility, brilliancy and power. Without any other than solitary 
self-tuition, he had learned to read before his parents knew that he under- 
stood the English alphabet; and in a few weeks alter he was sent to his 
first elementary school: his teacher advised his mother to place him under 
higher tutelage in some other institution. He was accordingly sent to the 
City School, and thence soon translated to Transylvania Un-'versitv 
where, before he was eighteen years old, he graduated with signal honor; 
and, in his twentieth year, his scholastic course was crowned with the 
Bachalaureate Diploma of the Law Department of the same institution. 
In his whole scholastic pupilage he was first in every class of every graje 
and developed cipia/ aptitude for every branch of science. When he left 
college to start his career of responsible manhood, his prospects of eminent 
usefulness and distinction were as bright and auspicious as ever dawned 
on the opening pathway of any native-born Kentuckiau. Good Itabits, a 
handsome and majestic person, graceful and affable manners, cultivated 
taste, thorough education, a true and benevolent heart, and a commanding 
intellect, fitted him for the palm of victory in the race of life; and thut 
armored, he might have contemplated his future, as his friends did. with 
high hopes of illustrating his lineage, of stereotyping his name on the roll 
of honorable fame, and of blessing his country and his kind. 

But his genial nature inclined him too much to social sympathy and 
■convavial associations, which, before he had entered the arena of profes- 
sional competition, partially unhinged his habits of systematic industry, 
stifled his ambition, and unsettled all fixed purposes "^of progress in any 
useful pursuit of proper manhood; and thus, too irresolute fo° the neces- 
sary self-denial, he, like many of the most gifted men in everv age' 
gradually trifled with his powers and drifted on the sea of life without a 
rudder, compass, or anchor, and his history and destiny were the results 
of magnificent talents, unpiloted by a vigilant and self-denying prudence. 
During his unfortunate probation he acquired a large lund of mtbcellaneous 
knowledge by observation and extensive reading of almost everv thiixr 
worth observing and reading. Polite literature, in all its forms, was his 
favorite study. He wrote much for newspapers and periodicals. His style 
of writing was versatile, chaste, and graceful; and his colloquial st\ le was 
copious, rich, and exceedingly interesting and attractive. Notwithstand- 



88 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



ing his prodigal waste of" moral power, his veracity and integrity were 
never donbted^ and he died, as he had lived, with a host of devoted friends- 
and without an enemy. Had his' sunny heart and massive head been 
guided by prudence, he might, under a fostering Providence, have 
achieved whatever man could do, and embalmed his name in the heart of 

posterity. 

But his fitfu! drama and its closing scene impressively illustrate Watt's 
photographic picture of all human life on earth: 

"How vain are all things here below.? 
How false and yet how fair? 
Each pleasure has its poison too, 
And every sweet a snare." 

And, although, in infinite wisdom and inscrutable benevolence, it may 
have been best for all that the subject of this brief memoir should have 
died when and as he did, yet many surviving friends mourn over the sad 
event and will hallow his grave with their tears. 

To rescue his memory from unjust obloquy or hasty oblivion, a friend, 
who knew him well from his birth to his death, now ofiers this imperfect 
tribute at the tomb of his shipwrecked genius. 

These dead children have been, and still are, the melan- 
choly subjects of my occasional meditations cvoy day. But 
the death of my wife is more crushing than all preceding 
blows. My only consolation for these Providential bereave- 
ments is the hope that they will be of short duration, and 
that soon I and all mine will be re-united in a happier state 
forever. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 89 



CHAPTER VIII. 

At the August election, 1864, I was elected an Appellate 
Judge, by surprise and against my will. The extraordinary 
circumstances characterizing that event induced an explana- 
tory address to the electors, which may be seen in the next 
enlarged edition of my "Scrap Book." 

The office was unwelcome to me, and the duties are irk- 
some and onerous. But the experiment so far has gratified 
me with the conviction that my faculties are as well adapted 
to the station as they were in their noontide. But the tran- 
quillity and locomotive liberty more congenial with my age, 
incline me to abdicate as soon as I can do so gracefully. 

As a slight memorial of my public life, I have and use an 
old judicial chair, presented to me in i860; and why pre- 
sented, and how received, the following correspondence will 
show : 

[The touching letters that passed on this occasion have 
been mislaid.] 

What I have said about my memory and self-denial, and 
the rapidity with which I wrote, may seem egotistic ; it is, 
nevertheless, true, and fidelity to biographic truth not only 
requires, but justifies these statements, which can be proved 
by many of my cotemporaries who are yet living. 

Accepting the Appellate Judgeship the last time with ex- 
treme reluctance, and satisfied that I could not continue to 
hold it without too great sacrifice, I resolved to abdicate as 
soon as I could befittingly. Some of my friends knowing 
this, and apprehending that a partial paralysis which crippled 
my limbs, but did not essentially impair my mind, might 



go LIFE OF GEORGE ROr^iRTSON. 



precipitate my resignaticn, protested against it. The follow- 
ino- is one of manv such remonstrances.* 

Nevertheless, without communicating my immediate pur- 
pose to any person, whilst standing on the platform on which 
I performed the ceremony of inaugurating the Governor, I 
resolved to execute my long-deferred purpose then and there, 
and, addressing the representative crowd there assembled, I 
announced, in that presence, my retirement from the Appel- 
late bench, and my resignation of the office of Chief Justice 
of Kentucky. This novel and unexpected scene took the 
crowd by surprise, and the occasion was hallowed by a pro- 
fusion of tears then shed. Shortly afterwasds the remaining 
members of the Court, and members of various bars at the 
Capital, met together and adopted the following testimonial 
as a tribute of their respect : 

STATE OF KENTUCKY, 
Court of Appeals, 

6th September, 1871. 

Gov. T. E. Bramlette presented the report of the com- 
mittee appointed to draft suitable resolutions in relation to 
Chief-Justice Robertson, which, on his motion, seconded by 
W. K. Thompson, Esq., after appropriate remarks made by 
each of them, were ordered to be spread on the Records of 
this Court, and a certified copy sent by the Clerk of this 
Court to Chief-Justice Robertson; said report reads as 
follows : 

On yesterday, after administering to His Excellency, Pres- 
ton H. Leslie, the oath of office as Governor of Kentucky, 
the venerable George Robertson, in the presence of a large 
multitude of his fellow-citizens, announced his final leave of 
the Bench of the Court of Appeals, and his resignation of 
his office as its Chief Justice. 

It is now meet and right that the members of the bench 
and the bar should inscribe upon the Records of this Court 

* This has been mislaid. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 9 1 

some memento of their veneration for his character, and 
their high appreciation of his great public service. Of him 
it may be said with truth, his hfe has been devoted to the 
pubhc service. 

As he put off his robes of office, pronounced his heartfelt 
benediction on his beloved countrymen, we beheld the rep- 
resentative of a race of intellectual giants. It was allotted to 
him, in the providence of God, to survive them all, with the 
solitary exception of his distinguished and venerable com- 
peer, Joseph R. Underwood. 

Though enfeebled by age, and wasted by disease, his 
mind seemed to be as active and vigorous as ever. Having 
finished his course, and won for himself the plaudit, "Well 
done, good and faithful servant," he stepped down into pri- 
vate life with the calm dignity of the veteran patriot. He is 
followed to his loved home with the approving smiles of a 
grateful people. 

The life of this illustrious man has been one of remarkable 
activity, and full of incidents and results. In every sphere 
of life in which he was called to move, he made an indellible 
impression. In his early manhood, and at the very threshold 
of life, he occupied the front rank in the profession of law, 
and coped successfully with the greatest men of Kentucky. 
His great legal ability, and his singular devotion to the in- 
terests committed to his charge, won for him a reputation 
co-extensive with the Stat?. In fact, such was his acknowl- 
edged worth, he was soon called into active political 
life. At a most eventful period in the history of the State, 
when it became necessary to vindicate the fundamental prin- 
ciples of the Constitution, and uphold the independence of 
the judiciary against the encroachments of legislative and 
executive power, no man wielded a more trenchant pen, or 
exerted a more commanding influence. His clear and mas- 
terly arguments, in the heated controversy of that day, 
contributed in no small degree to the verdict which \\as 
ultimately rendered by a virtuous and enlightened people. 



g2 EORGE ROBERTSON. 



They evince the same intimate acquaintance with the true 
theory of our Governrhent ; the same profound reverence for 
the principles of the Constitution ; the same earnest devotion 
to law and order, and the same enlightened and conservative 
spirit which have characterized all the subsequent efforts of 
his public life. 

Whilst yet a young man, in the very heyday of his life, he 
was elected to the Congress of the United States At that 
time the Kentucky delegation, headed by the illustrious Clay, 
was distinguished alike for their talents and force of character. 
George Robertson, though young in years, was the fit com- 
peer, and the acknowledged equal of them all. He was 
assigned a high position in that body, and by his unwearied 
attention to his duties as a Representative, his laborious re- 
searches into the archives of the nation, and his broad and 
extended views of public policy, with his keen perceptions of 
the dangers to which our free institutions were then exposed, 
and his profound anxiety to avert them, by wise statesman- 
ship and patriotic concession, he stood in the front rank of 
American statesmen. He stands to-day the sole survivor of 
that Congress, that emptied their heart's devotion upon the 
altar of their country, that sectional strife might never come. 
Venerable man ! He has lived to see the day which has 
proved him a patriot and a prophet. 

But it is as a jurist he has acquired his highest distinction. 
His mind was of that cast whicif eminently fitted him for 
legal analysis. His grasp of principles, and his quick and 
intuitive perception of the reason of the law, eminently quali- 
fied him for the high and responsible duties of the bench. 
In the alembric of his massive brain legal principles were 
coined and applied with confidence to the wants of an ad- 
vancing civilization. A giant in intellect, he refused, whenever 
necessary, to be bound by the res adjudicata of the past. 
With a profound knowledge of the philosophy of the law, he 
never hesitated to carry out its principles to their legitimate 
results. He had the mental intrepidity of a great judge. 



I 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 93 



It has soiTT^times been said that he made new laws. The 
fact is, he looked upon law as the.science of reason. Not only 
so, but as a progressive science, which must keep pace with 
all other sciences, and lend its aid to them all. He was not 
only versed in the common law, but his mind was well stored 
with the enlightened jurisprudence of Rome ; but at the same 
time he levied tribute on all the achievements of modern 
science, and made them contribute to the elucidation and ap 
plication of legal truth. Hence it was that the profession 
were sometimes startled by his decisions. Hence it is that 
we are indebted for those masterly arguments which are 
now recognized as valuable contributions to the jurispru- 
dence of the nation. 

Judge Robertson has long been recognized as one of the 
legal giants of the United States. His opinions are accepted 
as high authority in every State of the Union. 

He has conferred imperishable honor upon this tribunal, 
and the Bench and the Bar of Kentucky will ever respect his 
virtues, and hold in grateful remembrance his distinguished 
public servics. 

Thos. E. Bramlette, CJuiiu. 

John Rodman, 

W F. Bullock, 

Harvey Myers, 

J. R. Hallam, 

Chas. G. Wintersmith, 

Jas. a. Dawson. 
A Copy — Attest: 

A. Duvall, C. C. a. 

On the 9th of February, 1872, at last satisfied I was en- 
couraged by the faith which works by love, purifies the heart, 
and overcomes the world, and that this, independently of 
all creeds and dogmas, is Hie sonl of pure Christianity, I 
joined the First Presbyterian Church in Lexington, under 
the pastorate of the Rev. Mr. Dinwiddle; and all that I need 
add here on that subject is, that ever since I ha\'e enjoyed 
more peace and comfort than e\-er before. 



94 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



As this sketch of myself may close here, I will now add 
the declaration, that having, on all occasions, striven to do 
my duty in all the relations of life, regardless of my own 
interest and comfort, and consequently at the expense of 
great and almost constant self-denial, I could this day leave 
the earth with a clear conscience, and without remorse for 
any voluntary act or omission in my whole life. 

G. ROBERTSON. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 95 



CHAPTER IX. 

LAST ILLNESS AND DEATH. 

When twilight comes, clouds, that attend the sinking sun, 
catch his last beams, and in faint and fading colors show 
them to the world. Life has its twilight too, — some tongue 
or pen besides its own must tell its close. From their last 
hours, prophets alone, like the great Hebrew leader, who 
saw his own grave (forever hid from other eyes) between 
him and the promised land, may lift the vail. 

Though, in the language of his own calling, but tenant at 
will. Judge Robertson was permitted, for a long term, to en- 
joy his earthly abode, and was served with a long notice to 
quit. Nothing now was left him to do but to settle his score 
with this world, and examine his title to another home. The 
foregoing pages give the result of that enquiry, in effect, a.s 
follows : 

Reviewing my relations to mankind from the plane of 
ethics, or according to the standard of men, I am satisfied 
with my motives and conduct. Reviewing my life from the 
plane of Christianity, with regard to my relations to God, I 
entrust my case before the unerring Judge, to the unfailitig 
Advocate. 

Dr. Franklin, with characteristic and not unfounded self- 
complacency, expressed his willingness, near the close of his 
long and useful pilgrimage, to live again just as he had lived. 
Judge Robertson did not, perhaps could not, speak so de- 
cidedly. Perhaps his feeling was nearly expressed in these 
lines of Phoebe Carey : 

"I would not make iIil' path I ha\c trod 
Alorc pleasant or even more strai^lit ( r wide. 



96 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

Nor chani^e n^\ course the l)rea(lth ol' a liaii". 
This way or that way, to either side, 
So, let my past stand, just as it stands, 
Antl let me now, as I ma\-. or(,\v old, 
I ain what I am, and m\' lite i'or me 
Is the best, or it had not been, I hold." 

In some respects the philosopher and the jurist were vis a 
vis. The one extremely practical, and occupied with mate- 
rial things, habitually turned his powerful, but near sighted 
and microscopic mind, from the dim and ideal prospect of 
hereafter, to the substantial realities of the present, and the 
plain experience of his own prosperous past. The other, 
far more speculative, sought, with longer focal power, his 
reward in futurity. The one seemed to regard this life as a 
consummation and fruition ; the other as a beginning and a 
probation. The one was willing for a brief continuance of 
his identity, and for the stale enjoyment of a twice-told tale 
to escape the risk of not being, or of a state of being whose 
horoscope he could not cast. The other recoiled from an 
existence that is only long enough, at best, to beget desires 
which can never be satisfied, and attachments doomed to be 
torn up by the roots and painfully educate and discipline 
faculties never to be used, and then end in nothingness. To 
him, life was a worthless boon — if this be all of life, if not 
all, and the trial has been successful, or if the result of an- 
other experiment must be the same, why wish to roll a 
rebounding stone, by renewing a youth of toil, a manhood 
chequered with bereavements — ending in an old age which 
survived nearly every object of affection ? 

In estimating the character of a man it would be a capital 
omission to overlook a quality which he most desired to pos 
sess, which he most desired to be considered to possess, and 
which above all others he claimed to possess. Beyond ques- 
tion, he of whom we inadequately write, wished above all 
things else to be, and to be deemed by his fellow-citizens, 
morally upright, in the most perfect sense in which those 
words can be applied to human frailty. The majority of 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. Q/ 

mankind, must in most cases, judge of character as the law 
does, upon evidence of reputation, or what a majority of his 
acquaintances say of the person on trial. Ijut the real and 
underlying fact in every case is his conduct. By their fruits 
yc shall know them, is a proposition which has received the 
assent of all time. The rule may be plain — its application is 
often difficult, because most of the individuals of the human 
flora are, like Christmas trees, laden with fruits they never 
produced. 

Praise and censure are so freely bestowed upon man for 
acts that were never done, or were done by others ; so, often 
has life-long hypocrisy been stripped of its cowl, or its har- 
lequin garb of levity; selfishness won the palm of prudence; 
stinginess borne off the prize of pious self-denial ; apathy 
worn the crown of moral strength ; and wealth and patron- 
age hid a multitude of sins. So many indeterminate figures 
— every-day Cromwells and Robespieres — double faced Ja- 
nuses — half saint, half devil Dick Turpins — robbers to-day, 
almoners to-morrow — throng the thoroughfares, that the 
marks of rectitude are also marks of accomplished villainy. 
In vain may law and what was once good reason declare that 
every man is innocent till proved guilty, and that scoundrels 
grow and are not Minerva-like,- born complete. The out- 
raged common sense and experience of the people doubt or 
reject presumptions, faithless, as mercenary troops, which 
serve with equal efficiency on both sides, and so confound 
evidence that the wheat of society is fated not only to stand 
beside, but also frequently to be mistaken for tares — until 
the harvest. 

Still, to be not only negatively blameless, but to maintain 
persistently to the end every appearance of activity, per- 
forming all social obligations, and to corroborate these 
indications by an averment of motives, having almost the 
sanctions of a dying declaration, if not proof, must be 
deemed the best substitute for proof that can be found. 

Of all the aspects of virtue, the appearance of mere ab- 
6 



gS LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

stinence from evil is feeblest. Who can tell where omission 
ends and commission begins ? Or whether the temptation of 
A is not the aversion of B ? Or whether refraining from one 
vice may not be addiction to the opposite vice, just as the 
farthest from Charybdis may be nearest to Scylla. When 
the torpid snake is rewarded for not striking in winter, then 
also may the phlegmatic man, who, like Eve, is "fair by 
defect," be canonized for his exemption from the excesses 
of ardent and impulsive natures. 

Judge Robertson believed — as man was not designed to 
belong to "the painted populace, who lead ambrosial lives" — 
the butterflies — as the bones and thews of his body and 
mind declare, " In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou eat 
bread" — that to do his duty, he must work. And that he who 
hid his talent of money, of brains, or of muscle, "in a napkin,' 
was himself that napkin, with all the pliancy, little worth and 
fitness for low uses of a rag. His was not a dead faith. 

Thoughtful, earnest, self-reliant, standing upon his own 
feet ; never borne upon the shoulders of another, not for a 
moment ; a barnacle dependent for headway on the speed of 
the craft, to whose bottom he stuck ; nor a misseltoe or a 
fungus, sucking unquited sustenance from his country or 
friends ; in early youth cea'^ing to be a weight, he became, 
and to the last continued to be, a power to lift and sustain 
others. For all they did for him, he paid his fellow-man 
heaped measure, running over, and believed that the primal 
curse had been his greatest blessing. 

In the domestic circle he was worthy of unbounded vene- 
ration and love. As a citizen, he had been public-spirited, 
obedient to the laws, temperate, chaste, truthful in all 
things, in all things decorous and just. 

Without question or complaint, he accepted several not 
very eminent, nor at all lucrative, and still responsible 
and laborious offices, that had been assigned him, and reso- 
lutely and satisfactorily discharged their duties. He never 
filled a place ot which he was unworthy, or left one without 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 99 



having added as much honor and advantage to it as he 
gained from it. Though one of the youngest and most in- 
experienced, he was one of the most active and faithful, and 
was fast becoming one of the most distinguished members of 
Congress. 

In the Legislature of Kentucky, at its most brilliant period, 
by his unflinching boldness, pertinacity, learning, and elo- 
quence, he did the State as much service as any other man 
has ever done in that body. Never idle, and amassing large 
stores of general information, he had been widely known and 
useful as a writer and speaker on political and literary and 
historical topics. He had patiently, and not unprofitably, 
instructed many classes and individuals in the elements of 
law. 

When a sense of duty demanded, he had met men of all 
grades in council and in debate. And among the names that 
have shed the lustre of unquestionable integrity, varied and 
accurate attainments, and profound reasoning upon the bench 
of the Court of Appeals, his had been conspicuously enrolled. 

If the State loved to honor other of its citizens more, who 
of them all had been more faithful and useful to the State ? 
And if he did not render to his country and his race more 
conspicuous services, for which he proved his abundant 
capacity, it was because his country denied him the op- 
portunity. 

What a man, v.'ho has been equal to every demand, moral, 
physical, or intellectual, that has been made upon him, and 
has stood all the tests, and these neither few nor light, to 
which he has been subjected, might have accomplished, 
under other and more favorable conditions, beomes. after 
his goodness and strength are buried in the grave, a matter 
of idle conjecture, or of vain regret. 

Some weeks before the term of the Court of Appeals 
which he last attended, one of his legs became partially 
insensible. Domestic cares and business complications con- 
spired to disturb his mind and impair his health. His 



100 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



children importuned him to resign his seat, and devote his 
remaining days, which, in the course of nature, could be but 
few, to well-earned relaxation. He did not need the emolu- 
ments of his office, and had obtained all the honors it could 
confer. But employment, which had been the master of his 
youth and middle age, had become the friend of his old age. 
An active mind may possibly find rest in change of occupa- 
tion, but not in indolence. Habit, energy, and a strong 
sense of duty, yield only to disability. 

Men who desire to be contentedly idle, or to change their 
pursuits when they shall have grown old, must begin to be 
idle or to change while they are still young. The vulgar, 
but true adage, "an old horse cannot learn new tricks," 
is mainly true, because an old horse cannot forsake old 
tricks. The worn-out calvary horsjss of the peninsular war 
never forgot their training. Discharged from service, and 
pastured at the public expense, they formed into line of 
battle at the sound of thunder or the call of the bugle. 
The instance of the blind old Duke, at Crecy, who, 
stirred by the well-known roar of battle and the "stern 
joy that warriors feel," had himself borne, between two 
cavaliers, into the thickest of the fight, is remarkable, 
not because he was old, but because he was blind. 
History, recognizing the force of habit, especially when 
united with the love of power, has never ceased to 
wonder that Diocletian could betake himself to architecture 
and the culture of cabbages, and Charles the V. to a mon- 
astery, and neither of these emperors was far advanced in age, 
and both were broken down by fatigue and disease. Avoca- 
tions or diversions from the regular calling, late in life, have 
generally been unblessed. Therefore, sound reason, as well 
as inclination, generally persuade the lawyer to remain at the 
bar, the preacher in the pulpit, the merchant at his desk, so 
long as they can respectively discharge the duties of their 
vocations. But no man should hold or attempt to administer 
a public or private trust after he has become disqualified to 
do so. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. lOI 



Judge Robertson, though an octogenarian, was not a 
"lean and sUppercd" one, "sans everything;" and if he 
could not say with the Hebrew law-giver, "That his eye 
was not dim, nor his natural force abated," still he was hale 
an^ hearty, and seemed to retain the mental and bodily 
stamina of his best days. No man ever read with keener relish 
than he, the famous interview in which Gil Bias, in obedi- 
ence to instructions, hints to the decrepid Archbishop of 
Grenada, that there is a slight falling off in the vigor of his 
homilies; and as no man had a nicer sense of personal 
f honor and official integrity, so no man would have been fur- 
ther from replying to a similar intimation from a competent 
person, in a right spirit, as the ancient Primate did, with the 
words, ' ' I wish you all manner of prosperity, with a little 
more taste." 

He frequently expressed his intention to retire, on such oc- 
casions, and at other times he received many spoken and 
written assurances, from members of the bar, in whose judg- 
ment and candor he trusted, of their unabated confidence in 
his ability, and their earnest desire that he should not abdi- 
cate. If the question had been captiously asked, "Why 
superfluous lags the veteran on the stage?" he might have 
replied, first, that the people, unsolicited, and knowing his 
age, had put him there ; and then, after the manner of So- 
phocles, who, when his children, in order to obtain his 
estate, brought their father before the court on a charge of 
being in his dotage and incapable of managing his affairs, 
held forth, in overwhelming refutation of the charge, the 
Oedipus Coloneus, which he had just written, the veteran 
Judge might have pointed to his opinions on legal tender, 
the effect of war upon contracts, the liability of employers for 
injuries to their agents, resulting from the negligence of other 
agents, and many others of his later opinions. 

His house was almost desolate. As all must do who live 
to fourscore years, he had survived the companions of his 
youth, and most of the friends of his maturer years. Be- 



132 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



sides himself, one sister alone was left of all his father's 
numerous family. He had seen his wife and more than half 
his children laid in their graves. His other children and 
grand children had families of their own Although the eyes 
that used to "mark his coming, and look brighter when he 
came," were all gone; although he missed the tidy and mat- 
ronly form from the accustomed seat beside the hearth, and 
tokens of the graceful and gracious boy who had been the 
light of that abode, were scattered all around, he could not 
be persuaded to abandon his home, and could not occupy it 
without being saddened by recollections which every object 
in it awakened. 

Disregarding the gentle monitions of incipient disease, he 
resumed the duties of his office. His parting words on leav- 
ing home intimated that the time and occasion of his return 
v/ere doubtful. He continued to discharge his official duties 
until the morning of February ist, [871, when, while writing 
an opinion, his sight was affected with a dimness which 
glasses could not re]ie\-e, and the lines on the paper became 
oblique and irregular, though still legible. His left leg and 
arm soon ceased to obey his will, and he continued helpless, 
with gradually increasing loss of vision, resulting for more 
than a year before his death, in total blindness. 

The paralytic attack was complicated with pneumonia, and 

for several weeks neither he nor his friends thought he could 

live more than a few days. The sympathy and attention 

which his situation at this time awakened were wide-spread 

.and constant. Especially did he receive the strongest 

evidences of attachment from his former pupils and other 

members of the bar throughout the State. ^ 

*The following note from a distinguished lawyer, who had been his pu- 
pil, is a specimen of many of a similar kind, which cheered him while 
death pressfd his slow but certain sieu:e: 

My Dear Judgk : 

* * * * I do not intend to bclie%-e that I am to lose my noble friend, 
and the State its first citizen, until the fact shall have existed. You do not 
desire from me words of eulogy, and you have too much philosophy to 
need words of condolence. It was a white day for Kentucky when "you 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1 03 



Some of his old acquaintances came long distances, with 
no other purpose than to have another and last interview 
with their venerable friend. Of these some, and among 
them, Governor Bramlette, were soon to be re-united with 
him in another world. 

The Legislature expressed their profound sense of his 
great services to the State, and caused his portrait to be 
placed in the Capitol. 

Henceforth he needed unremitting attention, and was anx- 
ious lest he should give trouble to his attendants. In addi- 
tion to bodily suffering, which was often acute, his affairs 
had become involved, and he was compelled to know that his 
descendants would enjoy but little of the earnings of his long 
and self-denying labors. Still, he was generally cheerful, 
sometimes facetious, and always uncomplaining. He seemed 
to be at peace with God and man. 

Any notice of his character which omits its religious 
element would be imperfect. Looking at his religious expe- 
rience from a rational standpoint, he had encountered all the 
difficulties which a man of resolute will, great deductive 
power, and strong emotions, who has been compelled, at the 
bar, to deny or affirm, according to his position, either side 
of every proposition, and who has been educated in the 
school of adversity, to be fearless and self-reliant, may be ex- 
pected to combat before he rests on the simple gospel, which 
is to the Jew a stumbling block, to the Greek foolishness. 

Christianity was a subject of too great apparent import- 
ance to be overlooked or underrated by one of his inquiring 
mind and aspirations after a purer, higher and more abiding 
destiny than this way station — mortality. He saw, at a 

again assumed the bench; it will be a black when you ^^^'■^.''-^JJy^^ 
still live to continue to serve the State, that you have honored more than 
it has honored vou, so much the better; but if there be anothe. late, the 
past at least is secu;e. I know, my dear venerable fnend and preceptor 
that vou will not censure me, even if I intrude into *'- f^^ '■°°'-';-^^5^ 
obiect in now writing is to ask vou to direct one ot your child, en o, grand 
chUdien to write to me how you are, and whether I can serve you in any 
wav, either here or elsewhere. 



I04 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



glance, that its opponents must concede that it was the 
most remarkable fact in the roll of ages ; the source of the 
mightiest conflicts in the past, and of the most unselfish and 
untiring activities of the present. A cause for which men 
and women of every grade, social and intellectual, had foij 
saken all else, and poured out their blood with triumphant 
joy; a centre around which the brightest intellects of 
eighteen centuries had revolved — he could not close his 
eyes to the fact that it claimed to be a standing miracle, 
fully attested by its own histon,- and progress ; and whether 
considered as a cause or an effect, to have produced the 
largest growth from the smallest beginning, and the vastest, 
most beneficent, and permanent results, by apparently inad- 
equate, and even insignificant means, that have ever been 
known. Especially was he attracted by its claim to be the 
safe guardian of the present, with all its precious interests, 
and the only prophet of eternity, bringing life and immor- 
tality to light. He was drawn to it still more for the reason 
that it had been the guide and consolation through life, and the 
support in death, of many of those whom he had most loved 
and revered. And he felt that the possibility that God had 
manifested himself in the flesh, made it his duty, as well as 
his interest, to inquire if this were true. This feeling was kept 
alive and fostered, by the question which he was compelled 
to ask again and again, when the objects of his tenderest 
affections were taken from him. Shall we meet again ? Or, 
with the greatest of all thinkers unblest by revelation, the 
Stag}Tite ("who asked the dreadful question of the hills, — 

That look eternal, of the flowinsr streams 
That lucid flow forever, of the stars 
And Avhose fields of azure his raised 
Spirit had stood in glory — 

and found that all were mute), must I adopt the sad conclu- 
sion — If any part of the soul be immortal, it is the impersonal 
part?" 

Rejecting the conclusiveness of authority in religion, as in 
most things else, and considering evidence an indispensable 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. IO5 



means of certitude, and despising skepticism, which is the 
resuU of ignorance where knowledge is attainable, he devoted 
close and patient attention to the evidence of natural and 
revealed religion. Knowing that no mind, and especially 
one enthralled by the most exacting of task-masters — the 
municipal laws— could collect and weigh all the evidence re- 
lating to an\' fundamental question of religion or philosophy, 
he would concentrate all his forces upon single decisive facts. 
Of the crucifixion and resurrection, and the particulars in 
reo-ard to the character and conversion of Saul of Tarsus, 
were examined by him with minute and searching thorough- 
ness, because he knew that the correct decision of an issue 
on either of these stupendous facts, like a judgment at law, 
on a traverse to a special plea to the merits, would be 
conclusive, not only as to the particular question, but as 
to the whole case. Many questions he asked to which he 
received no answer, other than that insoluble difficulties were 
not peculiar to religion, but were common to every subject 
of human inquiry. 

He also devoted much time and thought to the investiga- 
tion of facts and statements in relation to the deluge. In 
doing this he had to consider whether the earth's surface ex- 
hibited an)- vestiges of the flood ; whether there were any 
traditions in relation to it ; whether the ark in size and con- 
struction was adapted for the purpose for which it was 
intended ; what was the depth of the inundation, and whether 
caused by a subsidence of land as well as by rain; and 
whether the overflow was partial or universal. His con- 
versations on these subjects showed large research, long 
rumination, and were replete with instruction. 

From his daily conversations on religious topics it was 
clear that, besides many side investigations and peculiar con- 
clusions, the main current of his thoughts pursued the worn 
channel which is open to all explorers. 

He found, historically, that man, left to the discipline of 
reason, unaided by revelation or physical science, had col- 



I06 LIFE OF GEORGE ROP^RTSON. 



lected into a moral code the rays of that hght which Hghteth 
every man who cometh into the world, and that in the ex- 
ploration of visible things other systems of relations had been 
eliminated, and not being able to perceive why necessary 
relations, resulting from the nature of things, did not imply 
a personal, intelligent, and superior power as clearly as such 
a power was implied by the provisions of a book of statutes, 
he thought it probable that such a law-giver would make a 
clearer manifestation of his will than can be seen in unwrit- 
ten laws. And turning to the Scriptures, which have been 
accepted by the Christian Church as the word of God, he 
found two dispensations, the one, undoubtedly of great an- 
tiquity, wonderfully preparatory for, and confirmatory of, 
the other, and he believed that the discipline of the unwritten 
moral law, and of the written moral and ceremonial laws dis- 
closed the necessity of a mediator and prepared the way for 
his reception. 

He learned all that he could from books and from persons 
of exemplary piety on the subject of experimental religion. 
And it is probable that his conduct and his experience 
were those of a regenerate man for more than forty years 
preceding his death ; but it was not until after he had been 
ill a year or more that he joined the church. This was 
not the result of any sudden impulse, apprehension, or 
moral change. He considered the transforming effects of 
faith the strongest evidence both of the truth of revelation 
and of conversion, and he had been awaiting for years a clear 
manifestation of the operation of this miracle upon his own 
nature, the unclouded peace, the full tide of purifying love, 
which he desired to feel, never came He learned that he 
must look out of himself, and that religious experience is itself 
probationary. One of his favorite books was the writings of 
Bishop Butler. Two books which he read most frequently 
in his latter years, were Buchanan on modern infidelity and 
Coleridge's aids to reflection. 

Durino- his long decline of more than three years, he oc- 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. ID/ 



cupied, most of the time, a chair in which he could either 
rechne or be supported in an erect position. Occasionally, 
for the first year, he rode out m his carriage. Afterwards, 
his only exercise consisted in daily airings about his house, 
or about the grounds surrounding it, in a wheeled chau'. 
Some months before his death this was abandoned. His 
speech was sometimes inarticulate — he swallowed his food 
with difficulty. His physicians said that paralysis was invad- 
ing his throat and stomach ; and he was subject to frequent 
violent and dangerous attacks, resulting from the disorder of 
his digestive functions. His reasoning faculty seemed to be 
as vigorous as ever, when aroused, but there was a moment- 
ary confusion in its first efforts. His recollection of facts and 
principles, of the names of persons and titles of cases, with 
which he had been familiar years before, seemed unimpaired. 
His recollection of recent events w^as imperfect. His emo- 
tions were easily excited. He slumbered during part of 
every day, how long or frequently, could not be told, be- 
cause often, when supposed to be asleep, he was engaged in 
meditation or listening to conversation. 

A once popular writer remarks : That nature, attentive to 
the preservation of mankind, increases our wishes to live, 
while she lessens our enjoyments, and as she robs the senses 
of every pleasure, equips imagination in the spoil. This was 
not wholly true of Judge Robertson. Still, without mani- 
festing any fear of death, or any increased wish to live, he 
did not wish to die. A few weeks before his death, he had 
remained silent for a long time, with open and upturned eyes, 
an attendant (his neice) asked him what was the subject of 
his thoughts, he replied, "My exit from this world." In 
response to her question, whether he desired to ^depart, he 
said, "I do not." Still, when he spoke of dying, which 
was'seldom, it was with perfect composure, and he selected 
two of his favorite hymns to be sung at his funeral. In the 
latter months of his life, he was frequently reminded of mor- 
tality by the decease of friends, among others, a servant, who 



I08 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

had been in his family for more than fifty years, met with an 
accident, which caused her death, and soon after, his daugh- 
ter, Mrs. Letcher, a lady of beautiful person and winning 
manners, and endowed with a vigorous and cultivated under- 
standing, was summoned from the earth. A few days before 
his departure, he said that in a dream or vision he saw all the 
departed members of his family, his mother, wife, and chil- 
dren, more radiant and vigorous than when in the flesh, but 
in other respects exactly as he had known them. During 
his last day (May i6th, 1874), he could only speak a few 
words. His vital organs, invigorated by his prudent habits, 
had often before rallied and now refused to surrender without 
a struggle. But his last hour was the calm close of a serene 
life. With that regard for places, hallowed by associations, 
which he never ceased to feel, he had wished to die at the 
spot where his wife and youngest son had breathed their last. 
And, reclining in his chair, near that sacred spot, with his 
children and grandchildren around him, his pulse and breath- 
ing slowly sunk. For one instant he opened his sightless, 
but now beaming, eyes, and turned from side to side his face, 
lighted with an expression of surpassing brightness. Were 
the beloved forms that he had seen in the vision now wel- 
coming him into their midst? As the clock struck ten, his 
usual bed time, he solved or ceased to heed the engrossing 
question of his life. The glorious mind, the tried and faith- 
ful heart were nothing or immortal. 



The following [from the Lexington Daily Press accurately 
tells the closing scene : 

DEATH OF THE DISTINGUISHED JURIST LAST 

NIGHT. 

Hon. George Robertson died at his residence, on High 
street, corner of Mill, last night, at 10 o'clock. Members 
of his family and kind friends, who have faithfully attended 
him during his long and painful illness, were with him at the 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. IO9 

closing hour of life, and ministered to his suffering in every 
way that warm affection could suggest. 

In the winter of 187 1 the venerable jurist was stricken 
with paral>'sis. The lingering disease, with varying phases, 
weighed down the strong frame, and keeping him an invalid, 
did its work slowly but so surel}', that those who knew and 
loved him so well were prepared for the sad event which has 
lost the nation a master mind. 

His last relapse occurred on Monday, when he was 
attacked with something like cramp colic. Every day suc- 
ceeding he suffered from chills, and on yesterday morning 
about 4 o'clock, began to yield to the dread summons. 
During the forenoon he was visited by Rev. Mr. Dinwiddle, 
who held religious services with him. In conversation with 
Mr. Dinwiddle, he expressed himself as perfectly at peace, 
and fully prepared to die. During the entire day the work 
of dissolution continued. The sufferer endured at times in- 
tense and almost unbearable agony of body, such was the 
struggle between giant strength and the King of Terrors. 
By the advice of his physicians opiates were administered, 
but they served to .ittle purpose. 

At nine o'clock he asked for ^\ater. It was given him in 
a spoon, and he asked for the glass. Soon after drinking of 
it he began to sink, and did not speak again. About fifteen 
minutes after he had taken water, Mrs. Judge Alexander 
Robertson went to his side and asked him if he recognized 
her. His answer was a pressure of the hand. Three times 
was the question repeated, but the power of speech was gone, 
and only that gentle clasp told the sorrowing ones that he 
was }-et conscious. Slowly the hand of death rested upon 
him, and just as the clock sounded the hour often, the heart 
ceased its throbbing, and the great brain was at rest. 

Two years ago Judge Robertson, with several members of 
his family, united themselves with the Church. From that 
to the end of his life he was an earnest, devoted follower of 
the Meek and Lowly One. For nearly two years he was 



I lO LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

almost totally blind, but so desirous was he to know "the 
ways of pleasantness and the paths of peace," he would have 
his friends to sing and pray and read from God's Holy Word 
to him, and from its teachings he seemed to derive consola- 
tion. The great mind which had so long been accustomed 
to view all questions from a purely philosophical standpoint, 
accepted the simple laws of Holy Writ, even as a Httle child 
accepts the parent teachings. The man who, for nearly a 
quarter of a century, was the expounder of human law, was 
himself an humble listener to the lessons of the Judge of the 
Universe. 

In death, as in life, the face of Judge Robertson bore the 
impress of that intellect which placed him in the ranks with 
those great minds, the movers of the nation in the years gone 
by. The countenance, when viewed by the writer last night, 
wore a calm and peaceful expression. The massive forehead, 
broad and smooth, betrayed no sign of the suffering through 
which the body had passed. From the face alone could 
be detected aught of the pain endured. The body was rest- 
ing upon the extension chair, which he had occupied during 
his illness, and in which he was resting when he died. 

In the room, at the time we visited it, was a little grand- 
daughter quietly sleeping. She was not aware that the Death 
Angel had swept over her family and called a loved and re- 
vered one, and those who were there did not awaken her. 

No definite arrangements have yet been made for the fu- 
neral, nor will any be made until the arrival of all the family 
and friends. The Judge had but three children living. Of 
these, two, Judge Alexander Robertson and Mrs. Bell, were 
with him at the time of his death. Mrs. Buford is expected 
to arrive this morning. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSQN. I I I 



CHAPTER X. 

FUNERAL SERVICES. 

The death of Judge Robertson, though not unexpected, 
created a feehng of sorrow throughout the country. The 
press of his own and of other States paid heartfelft, full and 
lofty tributes to his memory, and many Bars passed resolu- 
tions expressive of their profound respect for the character 
of the departed jurist. In the 9th volume of Bush's Reports 
may be found a transcript of the record of the proceedings 
upon the occasion of his death, of the Court of which he was 
so long a member, containing a just and beautiful resume of 
his life and character, by Judge Hardin, and immediately 
foUowinsj is the record of the same sad offices to the memory 
of that lamented Judge. "They were pleasant in their lives 
and in their death they were not divided." 

A few of these notices of the press, found at the end of 
this volume, may be taken as a fair specimen of them all. 



THE FUNERAL SERVICES. 

[F'rom the Lexington Press ] 

The scene was impressive in the extreme. Around the 
door groups of men, mostly men of that profession which the 
deceased had so highly adorned, but still embracing repre- 
sentatives of other walks in life, were scattered, discussing in 
under tones the noble qualities of the illustrious dead. 

When members of the bar reached the residence, the pall- 
bearers stepped from the ranks, while the remainder were 
conducted into tlie house, and assigned seats immediately to 



1^2 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



the right of the bier, which was placed in the folding doors 
between the parlors. The space to the left of the casket was 
occupied by ladies; that to the right by the officiating min- 
ister, visiting clergymen, choir, and gentlemen not of the 
profession. The coffin, covered ^ith the rarest flowers, 
offerings of love, separated the assemblage as described. 
One of the most affecting sights was the bowed and feeble 
frame of the vener-ble Judge Underwood, the school-fellow 
and companion of Judge Robertson, seated near the body. 
The old man, himself on the shadowy side of four score 
years, had obeyed the summons to attend the obsequies of 
his friend, and was then the occupant of a seat near to all that 
was mortal of the one he had loved so well. 

Shortly after the entrance of the Bar, the religious services 
began with the solemn, tender refrain, ' 'It is well. " Dr. Chris- 
tie then read the 90th Psalm, after which iM-a>-er \\as offered 
by Rev. Gelon H. Rout, of Versailles. The man of God 
then read the hymn, "There is an hour of hallowed peace," 
which was exquisitely rendered by the choir. It is said that 
this hymn, as well as that which was sung at the close of the 
services, was selected by Judge Robertson to be sung at his 
funeral. When the last note of the low, sad music had 
floated away. Rev. Mr. Christie began the delixery of the 
funeral oration, a full report of which appears in another part 
of this paper. More than once during the time the speaker 
was upon the floor, strong men's lips were seen to quiver, and 
bright eyes to moisten with tears. The sermon speaks its 
own merit ; the universal commendation gi\^en it by those 
who heard it shows the appreciation with which it was re- 
ceived. 

Upon the conclusion of Mr. Christie's remarks the follow- 
ing named gentlemen, who officiated as pall-bearers, took 
charge of the remains and conveyed them to the hearse in 
waiting: Hon. Joseph D. Hunt, Hon. James O. Harrison, 
Hon. Madison C. Johnson, Hon. George B. Kinkead, Hon. 
F. K. Hunt, Col. W. C. P. Breckinridge, Judge Joseph R. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. II3 

Underwood, Judge Alvin Duvall, Attorney General Rod- 
man, Major B. F. Buckner, J. R. Morton, Esq., Gen. 
John B. Huston, Hon. R. A. Buckner, and Judge W. B. 
Kinkead. 

The hne of procession was at once taken to the cemetery, 
in the following order: 

Pall- Bearers. 

Ministers. 

Hearse. 

Family of the deceased. 

Ex-Judges and Officers of the Court of Appeals. • 

Judges and Officers of Courts, and Members of Bars of 

other Cities. 

Judges of County and Magistrates' Courts. 

City Council. 

Lexington Bar. 

Citizens. 

The cortege, one of the largest ever seen in this city, 

moved down High street to Mulberry; down Mulberry to 

Main, and thence to the cemetery. There the remains were 

■deposited in the family vault ; a few remarks were made by 

Dr. Seeley, a prayer was offered, and the iron door closed 

upon the great jurist, to await the last summons which is to 

■call him before the Judge of the Universe. 



EXTRACT FROM THE FUXERAL DISCOURSE OF THE 

REV. ROBERT CHRISTIE. 

Even if this were the occasion on which to indulge in eu- 
logistic speech concerning the illustrious dead, your speaker 
is not one to attempt that sacred duty. A just and dis- 
criminating tribute to one possessing such forensic ability, 
technical knowledge, ripe scholarship, varied accomplish- 
ments, and a life of grand achievements, can alone come from 
the lips or pen of one who has trodden the same lofty path 
with himself, and who is competent to weigh the results of a 
7 



114 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



life that has helped to shape and determine the great events 
of half a century. The materials for such a tribute are abun- 
dant, and only need the shaping- of some plastic hand. For 
his career was not like that of the meteor which dazzles the 
eye for a moment, but is gone before you can analyze to 
light or determine its path ; but rather like one of the grand 
luminaries that rises steadily and gradually, increasing in 
brilliancy as it reaches the meridian, then slowly sloping 
down the West till it sinks in a flood of glory. His place in 
the intellectual heavens can be determined at any point 
along the path of three score years of our Commonwealth's 
history. 

The arena which he selected for the exercise of his powers 
was one where distinction could only be won by pre-eminent 
talent. For there were giants at the bar of Lexington in 
those days. One who could successfully cope with the witch- 
ery of Clay's eloquence, and break the spell which the sage 
of Ashland could cast over the minds of a jury, has no ficti- 
tious claim to greatness. Those fully competent to judge, 
tell us that no man ever brought to the Supreme Bench of 
Kentucky greater fitness for the responsible duties of the 
place than did Chief Justice George Robertson. A cursory 
glance at some of his published papers shows that he always 
took a large grasp of any subject, whilst no detail was too 
insignificant to escape his penetrating glance. And it is im- 
possible to overlook that delicacy and sensitiveness of moral 
touch which is visible all through these papers, especially 
when he is dealing with the feelings and reputation of others. 

One of the great dailies has indicated in a few words his 
professional status. It says: " His professional course was 
marked by high integrity of purpose, and while presiding as 
Judge of the Appellate Court, he enjoyed to an eminent de- 
gree the confidence of the bar and public." 

I am told by those who knew him well that he never 
shrunk from any work of usefulness; that he was one whose 
superior judgment and zeal were pressed into almost every 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. I I 5 

benevolent enterprise and public institution. He also sus- 
tained and filled with affectionate assiduity the tenderest 
relations of domestic life, whether of husband, father, or 
grandsire. But to use his own language touching another: 
" His name needs not our panegyric. The carver of his own 
fortune ; the founder of his own name ; with his own hand 
he has built his own monument, and with his own tongue 
and his own pen he has stereotyped his own autobiography. 
With hopeful trust, his maternal Commonwealth consigns 
his fame to the justice of history and to the judgment of 
ages to come." 

But there is one event in his life that we cannot pass by 
in silence. It is well known to most of you that the de- 
ceased did not confess Christ before men till he had passed 
the limit of four score years. But let us not conclude that 
he then for the first time considered seriously the subject of 
religion. There was perhaps no layman in the State of Ken- . 
tncky who possessed a more thorough and comprehensive- 
knowledge of the science of theology. He was familiar with 
all the more recent attacks on revealed religion. He under- 
stood thoroughly the principles and scope of positivism, 
development, and evolution. I mention these things to show 
how great was the triumph of faith at the last. When he did 
unite with the Church, although his mind had lost some of 
the elasticity of youth, it had lost little or none of its grasp 
and clearness. O, how beautiful to see this eminent patri- 
arch sitting for the first time at the feet of Jesus, trusting to 
Him alone for salvation. 

And yet the beauty of the scene is marred by a tinge of 
sadness when we think of how miich he might have done for 
Christ had he taken this step in j^outh, or early manhood. 
But let us praise the long suffering and love of God that let 
him wander so long, but brought him home at last. I need 
not dwell on the good confession that he witnessed during the 
past two years. But perhaps the most beautiful trait of these 
latter days was his love for music. Not for the heroic ballad 



ii6 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



or grand oratorio, but for the simple and tender hymns of 
childhood. It was said that the great Dr. Nott was soothed 
to sleep during the latter months of his life by the cradle 
hymn, 

"Hush, my child! be still and slumber; 
Holy angels guard thy bed." 

When the great Dr. Guthrie was fighting the billows of 
death, he asked those around him to sing something. They 
asked him what it should be, when he replied: "O, sing me 
a bairn's sang!" So our departed friend loved to hear these 
bairns' sangs— the songs of childhood. Does not this inter- 
pret the words, "Except ye be converted, and become as 
little children, ye shall in nowise enter into the kingdom of 
heaven." He knew for months that death might come at 
any moment, and he calml)- awaited his approach. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERrSON. 11/ 



APPENDIX 



A. 

SCENES OF EARLY LIFE. 

The following addenda were originally in the form of short 
foot notes, which, having been revised from time to time, 
whenever it was supposed that this volume was about to be 
printed, have grown by successive accretions, without refer- 
ence to any leading idea or regular plan, too large for the 
places for which they were intended. Although discon- 
nected, deficient in pertinent matter, and now seen to be 
written in an inflated and otherwise faulty style, they may 
shed some light upon their subject, and are. therefore, not 
without hesitation, retained. 

If habit is second nature, birth-place is second parentage. 
Mantua, bore })ie {ine genuif), are words of Virgil's epitaph. 
People of the German race speak of their father-land; but 
every one of English blood loves to call his native spot a 
mother. And aptly so, for birth-place and mother are the 
first teachers of the dawning mind. 

In his usual aphoristic style, M. Hugo says: "The config 
uration of the soil decides many a man's actions. The earth 



Il8 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



is more his accomplice than people believe. The education 
of hights and shadows is very different. The mountain is sl 
citadel ; the forest an ambuscade. The one inspires auda- 
city, the other teaches craft." But it is needless to refer to 
him, or to Montesque, or to Spencer, to prove that the nat- 
ural scenes, amid which a character is formed, are both 
directly, and, by modifying the social environment, the mould 
of many of its leading and ineffaceable traits. Examples of 
the fact are ever and e\'ery where present. 

The author of this volume had simple tastes, cared little 
for display, for fashion, or fashionable people ; loved music 
and beauty in all its forms, and was endowed with a vivify- 
ing imagmation, which the study of statutes and records 
may have in a large measure repressed, but could not de- 
stroy. No Vendean or Swiss ever loved his country more, 
or had a larger share of that regard for place, which Phrenol- 
ogists call by the rugged name, inhabitativeness. He had 
not first studied nature in science, "which reveals a rigid 
immutable order, that looks like self-subsistence, and does 
not manifest intelligence, which is full of life, variety, and 
progressive operation," but by early observations of the 
forces and changes displayed in the objects around him, he 
was impressed with an abiding sense of an all-pervading and 
intelligent power, and escaped the meshes of that cheerless 
positivism, which holds that God is unknowable; religion is 
superstition. Unlike city-bred persons, he was much given 
to solitary meditation, and could readily withdraw his thoughts 
from the distracting influence of society. 

He had learned to act and think before he had learned the 
authority of names, and was always an independent thinker 
— yielding only to the strength of reason. He had not been 
taught that the chief end of life is to acquire riches, and after 
obtaining enough to make him independent, he subordi- 
nated the gaining of property to nobler objects. These 
tastes and mental habits were no doubt, to a considerable 
extent, the result of the physical surroundings of his early 
life. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. I 1 9 



His boyhood was passed in the romantic region near the 
confluence of Dix and Kentucky rivers. The approaches to 
these streams have been denuded of their first vesture of 
evergreens, and the waters have shrunk to half their former 
volume. But the deep ravines, with their summer brooks 
and winter torrents, and the vertical limestone cliffs, are still 
there, and the southeastern horizon is still a waving line of 
purple-crested knobs, looking, in the distance, like the de- 
lectable mountains, upon whose pastoral hights Christian 
rested on his way. 

When the author was a boy, most of the fine country in 
this neighborhood was covered with the primitive forest, un- 
broken save by scattered "settlements, " which were either 
clearings, surrounded with a worm-fence, and dotted with 
fresh stumps, from whose midst .rose the little cabin, or 
the more stately hewed-low house of the settler, and from 
whose edges were heard the ring of the woodchopper's stroke 
and the crashing thunder of falling trees ; or they were dead- 
enings, whose belted and sapless timber was left to sink 
beneath the destroying hand of decay and of the storm. 

Those who have only seen the dwarfed, scraggy, scattered, 
and degenerate trees, A\hich are all that the Vandal axe has 
left in the central portions of Kentucky, can form no due 
conception of the girth and reach of the Titans that have 
fallen, or of the majesty of their vast assembly.* Large up- 
land tracts of these wilds were free from undergrowth, and 
their mossy paths, more beautiful and more springy to the 
tread than carpets of heaviest ply, were columned by stately 
trunks and arched and groined by interlacing boughs into 
"long-drawn aisles and fretted vaults," whose dim and sol- 
emn grandeur is feebly imitated in the noblest cathedrals. 
Depressed spots, the censers of these first temples, were 
filled with spicey shrubs and flowering vines, which at certain 
seasons exhaled varied and delicate perfumes. In the morn- 

*The writer published tlie immediately following portions of this article 
in an early number of the Dispatch. 



I20 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



ing of a still summer day, these woods were musical with birds; 
at noon, their silence was unbroken ; in the evening, their 
depths resounded with the droning orchestra of the insect 
world, "their ever changing magnificence never grew stale.'' 
In a calm, they were solitudes, into which the Egeria of med- 
itation loved to retreat at the call of her votary. When 
"the trees against a stormy sky their giant branches tost," 
the display of force was of that resistless kind from which the 
mind derives its conception of almighty power. In winter, 
the naked spray traced lovely embroideries on the overarch- 
ing sky, or gave forth a play of many colored lights from its 
crystal incrustations of sleet. These woods were gay and 
brilliant in the spring. Their saddest and most splendid sea- 
son was the fall — the foliage, ere it fell, put on all the glories 
of the evening clouds, and at the rising and the going down 
of the sun, tree tops and clouds blended into one, presented 
through the hazy air a sublime panorama of the apocalypic 
vision of the Holy City coming down from heaven. How 
vivid and pure the effect of scenes like these, compared with 
second-hand impressions made by books, or the corrupting 
influences of towns ! Who can doubt that the mind will be- 
come more fraught with images of beauty, more earnest and 
elevated b}- listening to the voices, and watching the work- 
ing of nature, and by associations with plain, artless, and 
thoughtful people, than by conning in hexameters, how Ty- 
tyrus dallied with Amaryllis in the shade, or by mingling in 
the frivolities of fashionable society? 

Forests have been the source of fertilizing streams and of 
renovating men. They cherished all of manly virtue that 
social corruption left in the effete old world, and gave it a 
nobler civilization than it lost. And in the new they trained 
wise founders and loyal subjects of free States, who combined 
the swain's simplicity with the forecaste and daring of the 
hero, and were worthy of both the bucolic and the epic lay ! 
Vivite Sylvae ! Farewell, ye woods ! Great countries bereft 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 121 

of trees have become material and moral wastes. May ours 
escape their fate ! * 

In these woodland homes the sturd}% thoughtful, and hon- 
est pioneers, of winter evenings, by the great log fires, told 
of the privations they had endured, of the never-to-be-forgot- 
ten "hard winter," of their imperfect shelter, their scanty 
and rough fare, their hair-breadth escapes from savage men 
and beasts, and inspired their attentive young ones with a 
firmness of purpose which enabled them to face dangers, 
moral and physical, and in the midst of difficulty and trial 
feel with the son of Anchises in like case. We, too, in after 
times may think of this with pride. The first settlers pro- 
duced and raised a vigorous breed, not only by commonly 
transmitting to their descendants strong nerves, strong bones, 
and shapely forms, but also, partly from necessity, partly 
from choice, by permitting the law of natural selection to 
have free course, they inadvertently adopted the regulation 
of Lycurgus, which required all the feeble and deformed 
children to be put to death. Having undergone exposure in 
youth, and being stout and hearty themselves, they inferred 
that the exposure had made them so, overlooking the need 
of strong constitutions to enable them to survive the expo- 
sure. The sleazy home-made clothing of that day was far 

* in "The Settler," by A. B. Street, are these lines: 
The paths which wound mid gorgeous trees, 
The stream whose bright lips I'cissed the flowers, 
The winds that swelled their harmonies, 



Through those sun-hiding bowers ; 

The temple vast, the green arcade. 

The nestling vale, the grassy glade, 

Dark cave and swampy lair, 

These scenes and sounds majestic, made 

His world, his pleasures there. 

Humble the lot, yet his the race 

When liberty sent forth her cry, 

Who thronged in conflict's deadliest place. 

To fight, to bleed, to die ; 

Who cumbered Bunker's hight of red 

By hope through weary years were led, 

And witnessed Yorktown's sun 

Blaze on a nation's banner spread 

A nation's freedom won. 



122 LIFE OF GEORGE ROP^iRTSON. 



less warm than the thick woolens now in common use. Most 
boys, even of the wealthiest families, had no shoes in sum- 
mer. Many of them not even in winter. 

One of the author's staunch _\st friends, who had been his 
neighbor in boyhood, used to tell that he himself went 
the round of the traps he had set for quails and hares, by 
dextrously stepping on one and then on the other of two 
shingles, to protect his bare feet from the snow and the 
briars. The stone bruise, which compelled its victim to limp 
on his toe; the stumped toe, which made him hobble on his 
heel ; chapped feet, which made him wince, when they un- 
derwent the indispensable scrubbing at bed time, were the 
rule, sound feet, the exception. And then all children too 
large to sleep in the trundle-bed in the family room, took a 
Russian bath every winter night by going into a room with- 
out fire, stripping to their short shirts, and jumping into the 
frozen brown linen sheets. In the morning they went to the 
spring, as the author has herein related, to wash themselves. 
It is strange that such air-loving, out-door people as the first 
settlers should have taken great pains to exclude fresh air 
from those who were ill. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1 23 



B. 

GARRARD COUNTY. 

If the place of youth is important, for preparation, hardly 
less so is the place of manhood, for achievement. The 
woods are a better school than stage, more favorable to 
study than to action, forces that have much range or speed, 
like cavalry and artillery, require space. Whether Judge 
Robertson's interests were best promoted by his long stay in 
the agricultural and then sparsely peopled district in which 
he was born, depends on the question whether fortune and 
fame are to be taken as part of those interests. Unquestion- 
ably he could, at any great commercial center, have speedily 
attained a front rank in his profession. 

Lancaster, his home for thirty years or more, is situated 
on a high table land, near the center of the State, and fifty 
years ago contained a population of five or six hundred. Its 
people were as intelligent, hospitable, and honest as those of 
any other town in Kentucky, then or since. Their houses 
were mostly of brick, well built and comfortable. Less than 
half the surrounding country had been cleared of the forest 
which bounded the view in every direction. The arable 
lands of the county produced crops far in excess of the home 
demand, and there were no accessible foreign markets, ex- 
cept for tobacco, which was floated down the Kentucky 
river in flat-boats, and for hogs, horses and mules, which 
were driven South, by way of Cumberland gap. Provisions 
of all kinds were exceedingly cheap and of excellent quality ; 



124 LH-'E OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



quails and squirrels abounded ; deer frequented the outskirts 
of the county, and in the fall wild pigeons in countless num- 
bers settled upon the oak trees ; the woods were well stored 
with honey, and produced abundance of delicious sugar and 
molasses. 

The fleeces of their own flocks, flax and cotton from their 
own fields, supplied this Arcadian people with most of their 
clothing, their carpets and bed clothes. These were spun 
and woven in the country. Their hats and shoes were made 
in the town. The only importations they needed were iron 
and certain articles of hardware, mordant?, used in coloring 
yarns, porcelain and the materials for holiday attire. The 
furniture made in the village was handsome and durable. 
Materials for building, except nails (the cut nail had been 
newly introduced), were excellent, and could be had for little 
money or labor. The difference between the rich and poor, 
at this time, was in the quantity, not in the qualit}-, of their 
possessions, and as there were no fashions of the rich for 
families of moderate means to ape, 

"Their sober wishes never learned to stray 
Beyond the cool sequestered vale of life." 

Lancaster was thv^refore a paradise for the poor. If it had 
not been. Judge Robertson could not have lived, comfortably 
as he did, on his slender salary. And still, Lancaster was 
not all the poet has painted Sweet Auburn, nor was the ao-e, 
to all, golden. It was the iron age of children, they were in 
charge of or compelled much of their time to be with negroes, 
who either had been born or were but one or two removes 
from those who had been born in Guinea. Ignorant races 
are superstitious. The supernatural creations of the negroes 
were all of a sinister kind. Their dreams, sombre, like their 
skins, producing none of the Naiads, Dryads, Pucks, Ober- 
ons or Santa Clauses, of happier mythologies, peopled the 
night with ghosts, goblins, and witches. The old mammies 
used to take forks to bed with them to keep oft' the witches. 
They believed in obeah charms, and interpreted almost all 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 125 



the ordinary and all unusual events of the day into omens of 
evil. The "uncles and aunts" of these benighted children of 
the sun, so infested the minds of most children in years with 
their delusions, that they were afraid to pass a church yard, 
to sleep alone, to go unattended through the dark, and un 
willing to turn back, after starting to a place, without making 
a cross-mark and spitting on the intersection, to prevent bad 
luck. If a belief in the supernatural be, as some suppose, a 
delusion, and not innate, early associations may have led 
Judge Robertson to look, if not with much credence, with 
not little interest into the evidence of the responses and appa- 
ritions that are alledged to have come from another world, 
and to have surmised to his dying day that there may be 
realities corresponding with the shadows which flit in the 
crloaming b-^tween two states of existence. 

He had been fortunate in having Joshua Fry and bamuel 
Finley for his teachers. Most of the schools were mere 
prisons to which children were sent with the mistaken view 
of keeping them out of mischief. School books were gener- 
ally destitute of explanations, and the teachers, with some 
honorable exceptions, too ignorant to supply the deficiencies. 
Punishments were inflicted for trivial delinquencies, and were 
often cruel, sometimes dangerous. A boy could not be for 
a long time an inverted V, by putting his finger on the floor, 
without danger of cerebral congestion, and this was no un- 
usual punishment. The great want of the town was a suffi- 
cient supply of wholesome water It contained no cisterns, 
no perennial springs, and but a single well. This would 
have been a source of insufferable inconvenience, if slaves 
had not been numerous. In seasons of drought this well 
would become dry, and then water had to be hauled from 
distant springs. The insufficiency and quality of the water 
were no doubt a principal caus'e of the frequent epidemics 
with which the village was scourged. And it was a terrible 
thiuCT to be even a little sick at Lancaster, because any indis- 
position, if a doctor were called in, almost inevitably resulted 



126 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



in great exhaustion. Hahneman had not beea heard of, but 
Sangrado had. Medicine of the most nauseous kind was ad- 
ministered in its most nauseous form, and in the heroic doses, 
which the gentlemen of the veterinary art (vulgarly called 
horse-doctors, notwithstanding they also doctor oxen) give to 
their patients. Every physician carried in his pockets, as 
regularly as he did his spectacles, a spring and a thumb 
lancet, and in almost every stage of almost every disease, the 
only option of the sufferer was whether he would hold out 
his arm to the one or to the other. So grreat was the raee 
for phlebotomy, that it was considered a good prophylactic 
precaution to bleed well people every spring, and it was held 
indispensable that one blade of every jack-knife should be a 
fleam. Warm water was freely given, not in pursuance of 
Sangrado's theory, to supply the place of the abstracted 
blood, but to assist vomiting, and thereby prevent a renewal 
of the blood. For all other purposes the use of water was 
strictly interdicted, and fresh air was declared by these Galens 
to be peculiarly noxious to people who were ill. A man or boy 
who was so unfortunate as to be sick at Lancaster, in those 
days, may possibly forgive, but can never forget, his treat- 
ment. Some of the most noted cures were of persons who 
were given up by their physicians, and were allowed by their 
nurses free use of air and water, and plenty of good food.* 

Members of Judge Robertson's family were often ill, him- 
self never — but once, and his remedy was peculiar Having 
been affected for several days with nausea or sick stomach, 
he received through the post-office a fresh number of the 
North American Review, in which there was an article re- 
commending cold boiled cabbage for his complaint ; he tried 
it at once and was relieved. 

Lancaster rarely had a stationed preacher. The inhabit- 
ants were divided among so manv reliijious sects that no one 
denomination was able to build a church or pay a regular 

*It is needless to say that the doctors ol Lancaster were, in theorv and 
practice, abreast of the most advanced skill of their times. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 12/ 



pastor, but they united to erect one church, in which the 
different denominations worshiped in rotation. Rehgion here 
was not so imposing as in the "dim rehgious Hght" of a 
Trinity or St. Paul's, but was probably fully as sincere, and 
not less effectual. The prayer-meetings were commonly light- 
ed by a single tallow dip, not much larger or whiter than a 
catalpa bean. When this feeble luminary needed snuffing, 
some brother valiantly used his thumb and forefinger to re- 
move the charred wick, and sometimes put out the light ; 
on such occasions, as dwelling houses were remote from the 
church, and matches had not been invented, the congrega- 
tion would disperse. 

This usually quiet little town was the scene of many a 
bloody set-to. Numerous individuals and families in the 
county, each thought the other too many, whenever these 
opposing parties met, which some of them were almost sure 
to do, in town, on every public day, then and there, in the 
dialect of the time — 

"They gouged and they l)it, 
Scratched, pommeled and fit." 

with fists, feet, missiles, knives (pistols were not in common 
use), to the unmitigated annoyance of every body, except 
possibly the doctors, lawyers, and undertakers, to whom they 
afforded some emplo}-ment. 

Social intercourse at Lancaster was unrestrained and cheer- 
ful. Mr. Robertson's house was the abode of neatness, 
abundance, and cheerful welcomes, and so were the houses of 
most of his neighbors The home society was well informed 
and persons of culture, chiefly preachers and lawyers, were 
frequent visitors from abroad. One man, a bachelor of 
middle age, visited Judge Robertson's house every evening 
during many years. ' Regardless of weather, or if detain- 
ed, of the lateness of the hour, he was sure to make his 
appearance between sundown and midnight, and his camlet 
cloak, often dripping wet, and his tin lantern were welcome 
sights to the whole family, especially of a bleak winter night. 



128 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



He brought all the news, foreign and domestic, and was a 
pleasant companion, of strong understanding, much good 
humor, considerable reading, retentive memory, and warm 
attachments. He was fond of a smoke, a chat, a good laugh, 
a game of back-gammon or whist, and fondest of all of a 
savory luncheon, which, if not tendered, he did not hesitate 
to call for. His presence was especially welcome to the 
younger members of the family, because he had a wonderful 
store of tales and anecdotes, and could recite Tom Jones, 
Ivanhoe, The Children of the Abbey, Tales of a Grandfather, 
or any of the many books he had read, wnth vividness and 
close minuteness. This nightly visitant and his host had 
been boys together, and they never tired of talking about the 
persons, events, and scenes of by-gone years. He died 
about a year before the Judge removed from Lancaster, and 
there was one less tie to bind him to that place. 

It has been said that people are every where the same. If 
this is true, the world is full of brave and generous hearts, 
for certain it is that nobler men and women do not live in any 
clime, or in song or story, than some of those who once trod 
and now repose beneath the soil of Garrard. Their memory 
will ever, to those who knew them, make that county a 
Holy land.* 

* Those who wish to know more of tliis countv may be gratified hv lead- 
ing a metrical histoiv. called "The Song of Lanca.ster," by Mrs. Eugenia 
Potts, the accomplished daughter of" Col.' George W. Dunlap. The writer 
has not seen, but lias heard favorable mention" of the work bv competent 

judges. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1 29 



c. 

HIS LOVE OF COUNTRY. 

His patriotism was both instinctive, or an involuntary ex- 
tension of his attachment for other objects, and rational. He 
experienced in its full force that unreckoning passion which 
made the exiled Foscari "Feel that his soul moldered in 
his bosom," and forced him back to Venice, though to return 
was to die, and which hurried the dying Scott from Italy, that 
he might hear once more the ripple of the Tweed. Judge 
Robertson gave utterance to this unconquerable sentiment, 
when he said, "And then, whenever or wherever it may be 
our doom to look for the last time on earth, we may die 
justly proud of the title, Kentuckian, and with our expiring 
breath cordially exclaim, Kentucky as she was — Kentucky as 
she is — Kentucky as she A'ill be — Kentucky Forever." 

His native State was the only country he ever knew. He 
was born two years before she became a State. He had 
passed the whole of his life within her borders, except the 
four sessions which he spent in Congress. She was the the- 
ater of all his domestic and social enjoyments, of all his efforts 
and his griefs, the home of all his living friends and the grave 
of all his dead ones. From her he had derived all he was ; 
from her he looked for all he hoped in this life. This, on all 
proper occasions, he gratefully acknowledged. He also had 
a strong rational regard for Kentucky. He had learned her 
physical geography and resources, and was familiar with the 
character of her people. Traditionally, or as an actor, he 
knew every event in her history, and he believed and unhes- 
itatingly asserted that, all things considered, there was not a 
more desirable dwelling place for man upon the earth than 
this "Hesperian land," and he strenuously opposed that no- 
tion, which is the bane of American households, that families 
should scatter in quest of wealth. He thought that the union 
8 



130 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

and co-operation of kindred hearts and hands would more 
than compensate for the loss of any prospects of material ad- 
vancement that could be afforded by a voluntary exile from 
country and home. He also had a peculiar regard for the 
counties in which his youth and early manhood had been 
spent, and was not alone warmly attached to the people who 
had appreciated his solid, rather than showy, worth, and had 
elevated him as high as they could, in preference to other 
men of ability and of fortune and fortunate connections; but 
he had a strong affection for the natural objects with which 
he was familiar. When he crossed to the south 'side of the 
Kentucky river, his countenance seemed to say, "the very 
winds feel native to my veins." Some now living have not 
forgotten his chagrin and distress when, during one of his 

occasional visits to Garrard, he saw that a magnificent elm, 
which had stood in a bend of the road, on his homestead 

place, and under which his children used to play, and which 
had been the first and most beautiful object that, in other 
days, had greeted his vision as he drew near home, had been 
felled by his tenant, under the pretext that it shaded the 
land. Judge R. never forgot this act of wantonness. He 
had designated a spot in Garrard county as the burial place 
of himself and family, and it required an absence of many 
years to change this intention ; and it was only after the 
beautiful cemetery at Lexington had been established that 
he gathered the bones of his deceased children into the vault 
which now guards his own ashes- He also became so at- 
tached, from clustering memories, to his home in Lexington 
that, in his helpless and desolate old age, no persuasion could 
induce him to abandon it. He expressed a desire to die in 
the house and in the very spot where his youngest son and 
wife had expired. 

This man of simple and loving affections, not only loved, 
he also lived for his country. What it is to do this he has 
told us both by his words and by his acts : ' 'What is it to 
live for one's country? It is not to get rich, nor to hold 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. I 3 I 



office, nor to be gazed at with vulgar admiration, nor to win 
a battle, nor to make a noise in the world. Many who have 
accomplished all these have been a curse rather than a bless- 
ing to mankind. But he, and he alone, who honestly 
dedicates his talents and his example to the happiness and 
improvement of his race, lives for his country, whatever may 
be his sphere. He who seeks his own aggrandizement at the 
expense of truth, or principle, or candor, does not live for 
his country — nor can he live for his country, in the full sense, 
whose example is demoralizing, or in any way pernicious. 
But he truly lives for his country, who, in all the walks of 
life and relations of society, does as much good and as little 
harm as possible, and always acts according to the disinter- 
ested suggestions of a pure conscience and a sound head. 
Whatever may be his condition — high or low, conspicuous 
or obscure — he, whose life exemplifies and commends the 
negative and positive virtues, personal, social, and civil — who 
lives m the habit of pure morality, enlarged patriotism, and 
disinterested philanthropy — and whose conduct and example 
are, as far as known and felt, useful to mankind — he, and he 
alone, lives for his country. And hence it is perfectly true, 
that a virtuous peasant in a thatched hut, may live more for 
his country than many idolized orators, triumphant politicians, 
or laureled chieftains." 

These are his words. His life afforded a perfect illus- 
tration of them. Entertaining and acting up to these 
sentiments, although many who were not in any respect his 
superiors, left him far behind on the road to power and afflu- 
ence. He never thought that his life, either as an experience 
or an example, was a failure. Disappointment never gave 
him any taint of misanthrop, or made him affect the part of 
a Cincinnatus. 



13.2 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



D. 

LOVE OF MUSIC. 

The violin, accompanied or not by the piano, sometimes, 
after the labors of the day were over, afforded him an inno- 
cent resource for the entertainment of himself and friends, 
and was also frequently the inspirer and the interpreter of his 
most serious musinsrs. His mother taug-ht him the scales. 
With this exception, his fine natural ear was only self- 
taught. Yet, without even frequent opportunities of hear- 
ing first rate performers, he attained a skill in all keys 
and in several different positions, which evinced a capaci- 
ty for the highest excellence. He played lively tunes 
with a dash and fire which few amateurs could equal, and 
could render plaintive melodies in tones that bewailed the 
loved and lost, and revealed delicate shades of feeling and 
conception too subtle to be expressed by words. Like 
Sivori, he fully appreciated the richness and power of the 
base or G string, and drew from it strains of surpassing vol- 
ume and softness. His most intimate friends can never hear 
Lea Rigg, or Turbaned Turk, or The Arkansas Traveler, 
without remembering how exquisitely and how peculiarly 
they were played by him. His favorite time for these musi- 
cal interludes was the evening, as he walked to and fro in a 
large room or hall. He dearly loved the old church tunes 
which his mother and sisters used to sing, and the beautiful 
melody. Old Folks at Home, for a reason which he has 
stated in this volume, never failed to move him deeply. He 
requested that it should be sung on two occasions, when his 
attendants supposed he was dying. On the first of these 
occasions, the fair cantatrice, the obliging and deservedly 
renowned Miss Carey, overcome by the sadness of the cir- 
cumstances, was unable to proceed. Many of the hours that 
he passed in darkness, reclining in his invalid's chair, were 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBEKL'SOV. 1 33 

solaced by songs of kind men and women, who had learned 
that he was fond of music. Itinerant minstrels were often 
called in, and not unfrequently some amateur band would 
play near his window at night. 

At his own house his services as a musician were often 
requested by his children, grand-children, and their young 
friends. For hours, during two or three evenings of every 
week, he would play for them to dance, and would partici- 
pate heartily in their innocent mirth. Most of those who 
were, from time to time, present at those gatherings, pre- 
ceded their kind entertainer to the grave. The rest are 
scattered, and the large and cheerful room in which these 
re-unions were held, has ceased to exist. The old violin 
remains, and is the most eloquent souvenir of its departed 
master. 

In his valedictory to the law class he expressed his estimate 
of music in these words : ' ' Music, Luther's intellectual ca- 
tholican, next to the Bible, in his judgment, as an adversary 
of the devil, should not be derided or undervalued. It ex- 
hilerates and tranquilizes the mind, elevates and purifies the 
heart, and thus contributes much of what scarcely any other 
amusement can as innocently contribute to improvement and 
happiness." 

E. 

DOMESTIC RELATIONS. 

To know Judge Robertson was to know hirn at home; to 
know him there was to love him. The strongest wish of his 
youth was to have a settled home, and when he had obtained 
one, to make that home happy was the central object of all 
his efforts. Nobly did he redeem the hostages which, he 
says, he gave to fortune when he married, and the pledge 
which he made to cherish his wife and children. His wife 
deserved his care, for she valued his love and the endearments 
of her home above all other pleasures, and accomplished her- 



134 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



self in all housewifely skill and in every domestic virtue. 
His letters to his wife, children, and friends, if they had been 
preserved, would have afforded the best evidence that could 
now be exhibited of the ties that bound him to his family. 
These, written in a plain style, related to all the occasions of 
joy and of sorrow, congratulation and of consolation incident 
to life, and evince a more varied experience, a wisdom more 
chastened and profound, and a wider sympathy than he 
manifested to the world But most of these have been 
inconsiderately destroyed, and among them many commu- 
nications that deserved a better fate, addressed to him by 
distinguished and by obscure friends, and which would show 
the regard felt for him by those who knew him well. 

The following letter, written while he was on his way to 
Congress for the last time, has been casually found, and con- 
tains a promise which he faithfully kept, by resigning his seat 
for two years in Congress, to avoid separation from his wife 
and young children, and to devote himself to the more ar- 
duous and less congenial labors of his profession for their 
benefit: 

Lanxaster, Ohio, 28th Nov'r, iSiq. 
My Dear Wife : 

Being entirely alone, I can't employ my time better than 
by writing to you. I came last night to a little town called 
Tarleton, 15 miles from here, and there expected to stay all 
day, as the stage does not travel on Sunday ; but being very 
lonesome, I could not bear the idea of staying a whole day 
in such a place by myself — I therefore employed the driver to 
bring me on here. We started about 12 o'clock and got here 
.about 4 I have travelled this far without company, and 
without seeing a human face that I ever saw before, since I 
left Stephen at Lexington. The trip is of course very disa- 
greeable. I am here now alone, about dark, and the weather 
is getting very bad. It snowed all day to-day, and will rain 
very hard I fear to-night. It is the most dismal night to me 
that I ever saw. I need not disguise from you that I am 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. I35 



completely miserable. I never was as unhappy in my life. 
I can think of nothing but you and the children. I have eat 
very little since 1 left home, and have not had one hour's 
good sleep — some nights I have not slept at all. But, in 
other respects, I am in good health. 

I expect to get company at Zanesville, where I will stay 
to-morrow night, and hope to be able to get to my journey's 
end on next Saturday or Sunday. 

It is just ten years to-night since we were married, and it 
-vvas about this time in the evening. This reflection, as well 
as every thing else I can think about or see, tends to increase 
my anxiety. 

I never will leave you again as long as we live. I will be 
at home as soon as I promised, or sooner, and intend then to 
stay with my family. I cannot be happy or contented one 
j-noment any where else. 

I am very anxious to see the children already, and partic- 
ularly Charlotte. I do not think I can stay from her. Take 
good care of them all, and of yourself, and be as happy as 
possible, and live as well as you can desire, without regard- 
ing the expen'^e. 

If Darwin's horse can not be sold he ought to be sent 
home. He is not worth wintering. Give my compliments 
to Sally and tell her to stay with you day and night, and she 
shall never regret it. If I could think you were contented, 
I could go along pretty well, doleful as is my situation ; but 
the idea that you are unhappy almost distracts me. 

Elijah Hyatt promised me to keep you in flour, and he is 
to let you have some pork. What you get of him, with 
what you may kill, if Archy attends to our hogs, will be suffi- 
cient. A man by the name of Cook is to let you have one 
hog — and if you want beef, Ben. Bryant will furnish you. 

If you should want money, call on Mr. George, and if he 
has none, get what you want of Joe Letcher. 

After I get in, I shall write to you every day. Oh, how 
happy would I be, and how different my situation, if, instead 



136 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

of Lancaster, Ohio, I was in Lancaster, Kentucky, with Httle 
Charlotte on my knee ! But the time shall, I hope, not be 
long before I shall make this exchange. 
Give my love to the children. Fare^vell. 

To his eldest daughter, when eight years of age, in answer 
to the first letter she ever wrote : 

Washington City, 15 th December, 18 19. 
Aly Dear DaiigJitcj-: 

It was with great pleasure that I received a letter from 
you this morning. I hope it will not be the last which I shall 
receive from you during the winter. I am very much 
obliged to you for this your first letter. I would advise you 
to stay at home this winter with your mother, and learn to 
knit, and improve your education by attending occasionally 
to your books and writing. Stay in the house and be a 
good girl; don't run about with the little girls of the town 
they will teach you bad habits and make you a bad girl. 
If you do as I advise you, I will make you some very hand- 
some presents when I return, and you may go to see your 
grandma in the spring. 

Tell Ellen I wish her to stay at home, and be a good girl 
and learn her book, and you must teach Mary her A B C's. 

I had very good weather during my journey, and am in 
good health. Give my love to the children, and be very 
good, and kind, and attentive to little Charlotte. 

Your affectionate father, 

George Robertson. 

His love of his home did not render him selfish or exclu- 
sive, or less willing to assist others. His opinion of people 
generally was too favorable, and his regard for their welfare 
too unselfish for his own good. His very failings, as has 
been before said, leaned to virtue's side. 

Although he had mingled long in many relations, and 
under various circumstances with people of every grade f 
although he was guarded and never known to be entrapped 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1 3/ 



when managing the affairs of others, still he did not seem to 
suspect any body of improper motives, when his own inter- 
ests were concerned, and was not particularly careful of his 
own property. Confiding in his knowledge of men and his 
discreet management of his own concerns, like the good 
Vicar, in his favorite novel, Goldsmith's immortal story, he 
was sometimes caught by the "cosmogony" of a rascally Mr. 
Jenkinson. He would entrust his own business to persons 
deficient in discretion — when in straitened circumstances 
himself, he would indulge or release his creditors, and could 
not always, perhaps not often, resist opportunities to assist or 
endorse for those who either would not or could not, save 
him harmless. He would descant on the virtues of careful- 
ness and leave his purse on a market-stall, and deposit his 
quarter's salary among loose papers, or drop it in the high- 
way. He would dwell on the impracticability of pocket 
picking, and the same day his own pocket would be picked. 
He thought it was easy to make profitable speculations — his 
own investments were rarely remunerative, and often a source 
of loss. 

Money he could and did make rapidly at his profession, 
and when made, expended but little of it for himself. Self- 
denial, long a necessity, had become a habit, and he only 
thought of himself after he had provided for the wants of 
others. He was particular as to small sums, because it was 
by their accumulation that he accomplished his determination 
to acquire a reasonable competency. ' ' Too low for envy, for 
contempt too high," without which h'^ thought with Junius, 
■ it was hard for a man to be either independent or honest, he 
was less regardful of large ones, possibly because when his 
character was forming, these had been too scarce to enable 
him to form any habit as to them. If he who discovered the 
mechanism of the heavens forgot that the kitten could pass 
through the same hole in the floor that admitted the cat and 
caused a smaller opening to be made, it is not strange if an-, 
other occupied mind should not always remember that a large 



138 LIFE OF GF.OKGF ROPFRTSON. 



sum is made up of many small ones. He lived well and 
bountifully for one of his means, and kept open house, and 
referred to the example of Cicero and the advice of Polon- 
ius to prove that a mm should maintain an appearance 
corresponding with his estate and his station. He also gave 
liberally to his children, needy friends, to charity, and to 
public enterprises. If his domestic affections were the source 
of his highest, purest, and most constant enjoyments, they 
were also the fountain of his deepest afflictions, and his un- 
utterable and long continued grief, as more than half his 
children and his wife faded from his sight, affords proof con- 
clusive of the strength of his affections. He has recounted 
at length his feelings when his latest born, the little Benjamin 
of his declining years, was taken from him, and in his pub- 
lished writings may be found at length his views of the 
manliness of a man's sorrow for the dead. 

The loss of his favorite child cast a shade over all his after 
life. If his grief was a weakness, it has been a weakness of 
all the better portions of mankind : of the Christian, who 
looks forward to a reunion amid happier scenes, and of the 
doubter, who sees in the dust of mortalit'' the end of ex- 
istence ; of the feeble and the strong, of tlie helpless widow% 
and of David, of Cicero, and of Burke. The latter, alluding 
to his deceased son, says : "The storm has gone over me, and 
I lie like one of those old oaks, which the late hurricane has 
scattered about me. I am stripped of all my honors ; I am 
torn up by the roots, and lie prostrate on the earth ! There, 
and prostrate there, I most unfeignedly recognize the Divine 
justice, and in some degree submit to it. * * * j Uyg 
in an inverted order. They who ought to have succeeded 
me, are gone before me. They who should have been to 
me as posterity, are in the place of ancestors." 

And how tender is Evelyn's lament for his departed Mary: 

"Oh, dear, sweet, and desirable child! how shall I part with 

.all this goodness and virtue without the bitterness of sorrow 

and reluctancy of a tender parent? Thy affection, duty, and 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1 39 



love to me was that of a friend as well as a child ; and thy 
mother! oh, how she mourns thy loss! how desolate hast 
thou left us ! To the grave shall we both carry thy memory. " 
No words can express grief more profound than David's 
exclamation : "O, my son ! would God I had died for thee!" 
Again, when his wife, who had nestled by his side, in sun- 
shine and shade, for fifty- five years, turned to him her last look 
and her last thought, and left him to finish his journey alone, 
he, though less given than most men to betray his feelings, 
sunk beside the bed of death, pouring forth a prayer such as 
can only be wrung from a prostrate soul, when deep calleth 
unto deep, and all the waves and billows of sorrow have 
passed over it. Nearly a year after his wife's death he wrote 
this letter: 

Lexington, ist January, 1867. 
Mv Dear Daughter and first child : 

I received, with grateful emotions, stronger than I can 
express, your very affectionate salutations on the advent of 
another Christmas, and your prayers for my health and hap- 
piness. I am glad to be able to assure you that my health 
is perfect, and that I feel younger at y6 years of age than I 
did at 66. But as to happiness, I neither enjoy nor expect 
any of that blessing on earth. I am desolate and hopeless ; 
all my philosophy and manhood fail to make me contented, 
or even cheerful. All that I see around me reminds me of the 
ruins of Time, and overwhelms my sad heart with memories 
of departed joys and buried friends. Ardent and incessant 
employment is my only relief, and now another year has 
dawned in gloom to your old and isolated father, whose 
only comfort is in the love and hannony of his posterity. 

This is peculiarly a suggestive day dawning over the grave 
of the old year and all that is gone. It inaugurates a new 
year, on the events of which our destiny may hang ; and for 
myself, whatever it may unfold, of weal or of woe, to me or 
mine, I consecrate it, by sober contemplations, on the past, 
the present, and the frcgtmit future, and by a sacramental 



140 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



VOW at your mother's shrine, to do all that in me lies to im- 
prove the coming year, by doing better and living better 
than ever before. Will you and your household join me in 
this hallowing resolve ? 

I deeply sympathize with you in all that affects your hap- 
piness, and for Mr. Buford I especially feel great concern. 
I would visit him often, but my official and domestic duties 
leave me scarcely an hour of liberty or pleasure. 

I would have been delighted to repeat my affectionate testi- 
mony to all my children and grandchildren, by appreciable 
offerings to each of them, but could not thus remember one 
and forget others of them. Circumstances were as such 
could not make useful presents to all. But I, nevertheless, 
am unwilling to answer your kind letter by words only, and 
therefore, not knowing anything better, enclose you a sum 
of money as a poor testimony of my paternal regard. May 
God bless you and all your household. 

Your devoted father, 

G. Robertson. 

Under afflictions like these, he drew very little consolation 
from philosophy. He found its whole sum in the beautiful 
but cheerless letter of Serv, Sulpicius to Cicero, on the death 
of Tullia, which commends submission to fate, because it is 
inevitable. He derived more from religion, which demands 
resignation to the will of God, because he is wise and good. 
But he felt that religion, even after its own verity is accepted, 
leaves us in doubt whether we shall ever again see our de- 
parted friends, ov l:aow them if we do. Perhaps the healing 
influence of time and occupation afforded him most relief. 
After all, long watching by the beds of the suffering and the 
dying saved him from many disappointments, by moderating 
his desires and teaching him the vanity of most of the objects 
of human ambition. ,- 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. I4I 



F. 

HIS GENERAL INFORMATION. 

He devoted far more of his time to reflection and observa- 
tion than to reading. Still, considering his opportunities, 
and the urgent demands of his exacting profession, his 
knowledge of books was remarkable. In early life he proba- 
bly had access to as many books as he could use to advantage 
— they were more select that numerous. He was thus pro- 
tected against the seductions of a miscellaneous collection, 
and mastered those that he read. By the time he was 
twenty-five years old, he had accumulated all the volumes 
that his occasions or curiosity required. His library con- 
tained the best works on philosophy and criticism ; a good 
collection of English poetry and early periodical literature ; 
the best of the English novels, prior to the time of Scott, 
and works of the best English dramatists ; fine editions of 
choice translations of the Greek and Roman epic and 
dramatic poets and historians ; popular treatises on all the 
sciences; standard works on divinity; theoretical disqui- 
sitions on government ; histories, general and particular, 
of nations and of philosophy, and biographies and memoirs 
of the intrigues of courts and of parties; the writings of 
Smith, Ricardo, and others on political economy, up to 
the time when he resigned his seat in Congress. He 
had but few books of reference, and relied on his own 
stores of knowledge and information at first hand, for his 
facts. He had read these books with attention. His ac- 
quaintance with universal history, including the course of 
both human action and of thought was respectable. His 
knowledge of the history of particular periods, and especially 
of the time of Pericles and of Gicero, of the Middle Ages, 
of the Protestant reformation, and of the English revolution 
of eighty-eight, was excellent. He read with avidity every 
accessible authority relating to the social and political 



142 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

condition of America. He was personally familiar with the 
whole annals of Kentucky, and had studied the biographies 
of the great judges. His inquiries into the origin and destiny 
of man led him to explore the facts of geology, and the met- 
aphysical and conflicting speculations of theologians and 
philosophers, and the evidence for and against Christianity. 
These studies became so engrossing as to exclude all others, 
except law, during the last decade of his life. 



G. 

THE POLITICIAN. 

The bent of his active mind made him take a lively pleas- 
ure in the study of the science of government. That these 
studies were crowned with a large measure of success, 
abundant proof yet remains, and his public and private 
declarations and his conduct evince that he subordinated 
his desire for place, immeasurably, below his love of prin- 
ciple. Those who knew him intimately will believe that he 
expressed his unalterable sentiments, in the conclusion of a 
speech of great power against the bill to reorganize the 
Court of Appeals, in these words: "Mr. Speaker — I have 
taken my passage in this vessel (meaning the Constitution); 
my wife and children are on board. I v.'ill cling to her as 
long as she floats ; and should she sink, I will seize her last 
plank as my best hope ! 

"In the humble part which it has fallen to my lot to bear 
in this great question, I expect not victory, I solicit not ap- 
plause. My only wish is that I may promote the welfare of 
the country that gave me birth, and entitle myself to the 
reputation of an honest man. I fear not responsibility — 
Heaven made me free, and I will not make myself a slave. 
I have not consulted men in power. Although not one drop 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1 45 



of patrician blood runs in my veins, I am entitled to the 
humble privilege of obeying the dictates of my own con- 
science, and of fearlessly uttering my opinions. And I shall 
deem it one of the most fortunate incidents of my life that 
I have had the opportunity of protesting against this ruinous 
and violent act, and of transmitting to my posterity, on the 
record, a memorial of my opposition to it. * * i!< * ^ 
As for me, I prefer the approbation of a sound conscience, 
even in obscurity, to the proudest station purchased at so 
dear a price ; with this, the humblest station cannot make 
me miserable ; without it, the most exalted could not make 
me happy." 

To Milton's question — 

"Canst tliou not remember 
Qjiinctius, Fal)ricius, Curius, Rcguhis?" ' 

he could have replied: From boyhood have I known them 
all. 

As the people who handed down these matchless stories 
must have practiced the virtues which they admired, so now, 
it is impossible to be thoroughly pervaded with the spirit of 
these traditions without exhibiting their influence in conduct. 

Although he held but few political offices, and those for 
but a short time, and while upon the bench carefully lifted 
the judicial ermine above the mire of parties, he was a more 
active and efficient politician than many who have devoted 
their undivided time to public affairs, and who have obtained 
far greater distinction than ever lell to him. A vigilant and 
attentive observer of men and measures, he discussed from 
the platform and through the press most of the great public 
questions which were agitated during his times. This is at- 
tested by his various published addresses, and by his letters 
and pamphlets on theory of popular government, on the re- 
lief laws, on the tariff, on the Missouri compromise and 
squatter sovereignty, on common schools, on the American 
policy against the new Constitution, again.st an elective ju- 
diciary, on nullification and secession, on the doctrine of 



144 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

popular instructions, on slavery and emancipation, and on 
many other topics. 

These publications have a grasp and power, and show an 
amount of information far greater than can be found in the 
fleeting productions of the ordinary politician. They have 
much of the philosophic breadth, of the writings of Hamilton, 
and the disquisitions of Burke, and contain, or foreshadow, 
nearly all those valuable truths for which the subsequent 
works of Mill on government, and De Toqueville on democ- 
racy, are prized. This could be shown by a comparison of 
their respective waitings, and the coincidence is noticed, as 
an example, that able minds think alike. He says of him- 
self: "My public life has been short and humble; it 
furnishes no incidents to flatter pride or gratify ambition." 

Several probable reasons might be suggested why he was 
not a more conspicuous politician : 

1. The urgent demands of a growing family compelled 
him to retire from the pursuit when in the high road to suc- 
cess. 

2. He never hesitated to advocate what, upon mature de" 
liberation, he considered right and expedient, or to oppose any 
proposition which he considered wrong or false. His writings, 
his teachings, his conduct showed that he preferred to suffer 
for doing right rather than to be rewarded for doing wrong. 
They declare his conviction, that the price of every good is 
a conflict in which every combatant must take the risk of 
defeat, of neglect, of obloquy ; and his belief that the history 
of those who have fought and lost, if it could be written, 
would be a nobler epic than the story of those wlio have 
won. Nor did he believe in the right of any competent citi- 
zen to shirk the battle in which he was interested. In his 
view, the difference between the man who slunk from, and 
him who faced, responsibility, who did the act, and ^\•ho per- 
mitted it to be done, was, if the act were right, that the one 
was brave and truthful, the other a coward, who adhered not 
to the right but the winning side ; if the act were wrong, that 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1 45 



the one played the part of a robber, the other of a thief, or 
an assassin. 

In becoming a politician, he squarely accepted these issues. 
He constantly and openly avowed his opposition to the doc- 
trine of popular instructions, and his unwillingness to hold an 
office that fettered his judgment and constrained his con- 
science. 

Recognizing the natural and established right of the ma- 
jority to govern, with bold and incisive words he defended 
and expounded the constitutional barriers to its dominion. 
As allowing an appeal from the impulse of a mob to the 
second thoughts of the individuals composing it, he demon- 
strated that, without sleepless restraint, its sway might be 
more fearful than that of the worst central tyranny; not only 
because of its divided responsibility, but because its eyes 
and its hands, being in every place, no disguise can escape 
its vigilance, no fleetness its pursuit. That its power and its 
penalties might combine the despotism of kings, of priests, 
and of classes, destroying liberty and life like the first, chain- 
ing the thoughts and conscience, and destroying the soul like 
the second, and interdicting the expression of opinions, ex- 
communicating from society and making its victim a pariah 
or an exile like the third. Fearful of indiscriminate suffrage, 
and believing that the pioneers who had borne the heat and 
burden of the day, in subduing and improving the country, 
had earned the title to secure the blessings they had won, 
he insisted that Americans should govern America. Relief 
laws rushing in, the tide of bankruptcy swept the State 
like a torrent. Young, obscure, poor, and alone, he 
threw himself into the flood and breasted it. If not in favor 
of the immediate emancipation of slaves, he was opposed to 
their increase, and when the majority were phrenzied on the 
question, he urged the re-enactment of a law interdicting 
their importation into Kentucky, and in this way lost all 
future prospect of promotion. Though a southern mr.n by 
birth, alliance, and sympathy, he published elaborate argu- 
9 



146 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

ments against the doctrine of Nullification, the Virginia and 
Kentucky resolutions of '98 and '99, and the right and expe- 
diency of secession. 

He might have said (in fact, often has said), with Burke, 
"I was not swaddled, and dandled, and rocked into a legis- 
lator — nitor in advcrsuni is the motto for a man like me. I 
possessed not one of the qualities, nor cultivated one of the 
arts that recommend to the favor and protection of the great. 
I was not made for a minion or tool. As little did I follow 
the trade of winning the hearts by imposing on the under- 
standings of the people. At every step of my progress in 
Hfe (for in every step was I traversed and opposed), and at 
every turnpike I met I was obliged to show my passport, and 
again and again to prove my sole title to the honor of being 
useful to my country, by a proof that I ^^■as not wholly un- 
acquainted with its laws. I had no arts but manly arts. On 
them I have stood, and please God to the last gasp, will I 
stand." 

Not a few nor unobservant men believe that the holdine: 
of a public office has long ceased to be any evidence of merit, 
either because according to the famous line which cost Nae- 
vius his liberty, '' Fato Mctelli fiunt Rovke consulcs,'' which 
may be paraphrased, destiny alone confers honors in America; 
or, because public virtue has reached that stage of decline 
in which Dryden says nothing goes unrewarded but desert; 
or, in the defiant words of that invulnerable political paladin, 
who hissed so many bitter charges and challenges through 
the bars of his visor, in which trifles float and are preserved, 
while every thing valuable sinks to the bottom and is lost 
forever. 

When C. T. Varro, after the overwhelming defeat at Can- 
nae, caused by his own misconduct, doubtful of his reception, 
had drawn near Rome, the Senate and people came out to 
meet him and publicly thanked him — "For that he had not 
despaired of the Republic." Who says Republics are un- 
grateful? Not the successful aspirant, his success, whoever 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 14/ 



fails, does not prove it— to him. Not the C. T. Varros, who 
every day are rewarded for no visible merit, if not "For that 
they have not despaired of the Republic," and never will 
so long as there are places to fill and money to pay for hold- 
ing them. 

Our republics are not ungrateful, if they sometimes bestow 
their gratitude upon the wrong men. It is probably because 
the notion has been gradually and generally adopted, that 
allegiance to a party is the highest patriotism and the most 
useful talent, and a few managers, looking alone to their own 
interests, who assume to represent a party, are permitted to 
dictate for whom the masses shall cast their suffrages. These 
men are the designing Rebeccas, the people are blind Abra- 
hams, who mistake the Jacobs for the Esaus. 

If Judge Robertson's hope of preferment was ever disap- 
pointed, his chagrin soon passed away, and he spoke well of, 
and felt not unkindly towards, those who had opposed him. 
He may have been ambitious, but was too tall for envy; too 
masculine and too busy to be a gossip ; too self-respecting 
and erenerous to be a detractor. Besides, while he was still 
in a green and hale old age, he had lived long enough to 
know the vanity of human aspirations, and the degrading 
littleness of jealousy, at the advancement of others. If he 
did not, like England's gifted son, stand amid the crowded 
monuments and fading hatchments of another Westminster 
Abbey, and feel every emotion of rivalry die within him, he 
did stand in the midst of a far more affecting and pitiable 
scene. Around him were the scattered, obscure, and neg- 
lected graves of all the most successful cotemporaries of his 
prime. He had survived them all A new generation had 
sprung up that worshiped strange gods, who, in their turn, 
were soon to be torn from their shrines and be forgotten. 

Reviewing his political life at an advanced age, he says: 
"My public life has been short and humble; it furnishes no 
incidents to flatter pride or gratify ambition. If in the stormy 
and difficult times in which it was spent, it has been disinter- 



148 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

ested, firm and straight forward, I shall have fulfilled in its 
results all m}' expectations, and have deserved as much com- 
mendation as I have ever desired. If, in reviewing it, I see 
nothing to be vain of, or to extort the applause or admiration 
of others, I see, what is more grateful to my feelings, that it 
exhibits nothing of which I am ashamed, or of which, on 
mature reflection, I repent. But while I recollect no act of 
my public life which I would alter, I confess that I have-, 
more than once, done that which I regretted, and still regret, 
being compelled to do by convictions of public duty. In 
other words, my votes have not always been in accord 
with my feelings. Political life, however humble or unam- 
bitious, is beset with many difficulties, trials, and perplexities; 
it is the crucible of merit, the ordeal of virtue and energy. 
He who expects to pass through unhurt and self satisfied, 
and wishes to be able, when at his journeys' end, to look 
back, without shame or remorse, on the various meanderings 
and multiform incidents of the mazy path which he has fol- 
lowed, must be prepared to do many things incompatible 
with his individual interests, and repugnant to his personal 
and local predilections. He must expect to be instructed by 
the suggestions of an unbiased judgment, frequently to do 
that which, while his head approves, his heart abjures. He 
must be prepared, too, to smile with unmixed contempt at 
causeless abuse, and to see his popularity in ruins without 
emotions of sorrow, surprise, or resentment, looking in tri- 
umph to its day of resurrection. All who engage in political 
warfare should be thus shielded, if they wish to avoid ulti- 
mate discomfiture and disgrace. A firm and honest man 
should always be contented under the consciousness, if he 
fail, of having done his duty. He has also for his encour- 
agement an assurance from the testimony of all experience, 
that if, in the storms of faction or momentary popular com- 
motion, he shall be, for awhile, overwhelmed, and lighter 
bodies should be permitted, for a moment, to mount the 
bursting wave, the sunshine of reason and the calm of sober 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. I49 



judgment will soon retnrn and find him on a proud eminence 
high above those ephemeral favorites who could vegetate and 
flourish only in the beams of popular favor, and cameleon- 
like, live by snuffing air — the breath of popular applause. 
No wise man will be insensible to the approbation of his 
fellow-men, or indifferent about obtaining it ; but no honest 
man will ever attempt to obtain it in any other way than by 
endeavoring to deserve it. The popularity which is gratify- 
incr to an honorable and elevated mind, is not that evanescent 
capricious thing that must be conciliated by caresses, and 
purchased by dishonest compliances, but that high and con- 
stant sentiment of esteem which follows virtuous actions, and 
is their best reward, next to the approbation of a sound con- 
science, which it will, sooner or later, gratify and prosper. 

1 have been anxious to obtain your approbation, but more 
so to secure that of my own conscience. The last I know I 
enjoy — the first I have endeavored to deserve." 



H. 

THE LAWYER. 

• In this age of railroads and turnpikes, of , comfortable inns 
and commodious court-houses, it is difficult to realize the 
inconveniences, toil, and exposure to which the lawyers of 
an earlier day were subjected. Then it was necessary to go 
from court to court ; the circuits were large ; the courts far 
apart; accommodations at hotels wretched in quality and 
small in quantity. The roads never good, frequently almost, 
and sometimes altogether, impassable; the streams uribridged ; 
ferries few and fords difficult ; court-houses small, ill venti- 
lated and crowded; the people rough, familiar, always calling 
a man, whatever his age or station, by his christian name, 
noisy, and belligerent. Mr. Robertson kept two or three 



150 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

saddle horses, the best he could procure. Mounted on one 
of them, and enveloped in a drab great coat, with three capes, 
shingling him to the waist, and with skirts reaching to his 
heels, his legs encased in the indispensable green baize leg- 
gings, enormous buckskin gauntlets on his hands, and with 
well-filled saddle-bags, he would, in mid-winter, with defiant 
will, intensified by necessit}', go forth in storm of sleet or 
rain, through mire or slush, upon the circuit, not knowing 
how long he would be deprived of the comforts of home. 
These journeys were often protracted far into the night. Re- 
gardful of his horse, as he was of every living thing over which 
he had control, he was still compelled to be a hard rider. 
When he w^s Judge, he would accomplish the distance from 
Frankfort to Lancaster, about 57 miles, when the broken 
road was at its worst, without leaving the saddle. On his 
return from courts, he almost invariably brought presents to 
his wife and children. These were often in packages or 
bundles so large or numerous as to subject him to much in- 
convenience, but the delight he afforded the "expectant wee 
things" amply repaid him for his trouble. 

He undertook the practice of the law amid circumstances 
which threw him entirely upon his own efforts. He was a 
boy, incompetent in law to make a binding agreement for his 
professional services. His poverty was next door to indi- 
gence, and he had married a wife whose only dowry was her 
beauty, her virtues, her cheerful willingness to share his un- 
certain fortunes, and that womanly intuition more ready and 
infallible than reason, and which makes a discreet wife the 
wisest and safest counsellor of her husband. 

His scholastic training, notwithstanding his rapid insight 
and faithful memory, had been too hurried and too brief. 
His legal knowledge had been acquired without the aid of an 
instructor, and the law was then far more difficult and per 
plexed than now, and law books less perspicuous than those 
of the present day. The bar of the circuit in which he lived 
was crowded with men, who, in a broader and more elaborate 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. I51 

sphere, would have become widely eminent, and would have 
been considered able jurists and persuasive advocates at any 
'bar of any time. Dockets were small, fees in ordinary cases 
were slender, great cases were few, and all cases were prose- 
cuted and defended with the utmost pertinacity. Mr. 
Robertson was small and slight in person, his health not ro- 
'bust, his disposition retiring, and his mind reflective rather 
than objective. He lacked those charms of manner and voice 
which fascinate crowds and serve to adorn superior qualities 
•or conceal the want of them. 

His friends had greater need of assistance than ability to 
render it. Yet, by the time he was twenty-five years old, he 
was not only a good lawyer, but had convinced the people of 
that fact, and had obtained a business second in amount and 
grade to that of none of his professional brethren. That he 
was then a good lawyer is shown by the fact that, although 
during the interval between that time and the date of his ap 
pointment to the Appellate bench, he was engrossed with 
politics, he was fully quahfied to discharge his judicial duties, 
and rendered decisions not inferior to his subsequent ones. 
His success is attributable to great mental power, guided by 
rectitude and impelled by indomitable energy — energy stim- 
ulated, but not created by necessity. Weak men are crushed, 
not strengthened, by burdens. Circumstances are the occa- 
sion, not the causes, of power. A great chancellor's advice 
to a father, who consulted him as to the best means to make 
his son an efficient lawyer, namely: To permit him to spend 
his patrimony ; marry a rich wife and exhaust her estate, 
and then, under stress of circumstances, live like a hermit and 
work like a horse, would not produce the desired result in the 
case of every son. 

The following description, which Judge Robertson has 
given of the discipline and qualities of another, is an accurate 
statement of his own moral and mental training: 

"Without the adventitious influence of wealth, or family, 
or accident, and without any of the artifices of vulgar ambi- 



153 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

tion or selfish pretension, he was, as soon as known, honored 
with the universal homage of that kind of cordial respect 
which nothing but intrinsic and unobtrusive merit can ever 
command, and which alone can be either gratifying or hon- 
orable to a man of good taste and elevated mind. It was his 
general intelligence, his undoubted probity, his child-like can- 
dor, his scrupulous honor, and undeviating rectitude, which 
alone extorted — what neither money, nor office, nor flattery, 
nor duplicity, can ever secure — the sincere esteem of all who 
knew him. And so conspicuous and attractive was his unos- 
tentatious worth, that, though he rather shunned than courted 
official distinction, it sought him and called him from his 
native obscurity and the cherished privacy of domestic enjoy- 
ment. His education was unsophisticated and practical. He 
learned things instead of names, principles of moral truth 
and inductive philosophy instead of theoretic systems and 
scholastic dogmatisms. His country education preserved 
and fortified all his useful faculties, physical and moral — his 
taste was never perverted by false fashion — his purity was 
never contaminated by the examples or seduced by the temp- 
tations of demoralizing associations. Blessed with a robust 
constitution, his habitual industry, and ' temperance in all 
things,' preserved his organic soundness and promoted the 
health and vigor of his body and his mind. What he knew 
to be right he always practised — and that which he felt to be 
wrong he invariably avoided. In his pursuit after knowledge 
his sole objects were truth and utility. In his social inter- 
course he was chaste, modest, and kind — and all his conduct, 
public and private, was characterized by scrupulous fidelity, 
impartial justice, and an enlightened and liberal spirit of 
philanthropy and beneficence. Self-poised, he resolutely 
determined that his destiny should depend on his own con- 
duct. Observant, studious, and discriminating, whatever he 
acquired from books, or from men. he made his own by ap- 
propriate cogitation or manipulation. And thus, as far as he 
went in the career of knowledge, he reached, as if per saltan., 
the end of all learning — practical truth and utility. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



153 



"Panoplied in such principles and habitudes, his merit 
could not be concealed. In a just and discerning community, 
such a man is as sure of honorable fame as substance is of 
shadow in the sun-light of day. And have we not here a 
striking illustration of the importance of right education and 
self-dependence ? Proper education is that kind of instruction 
and discipline, moral, mental, and physical, which will teach 
the boy what he should do and what he should shun, when 
he becomes a man, and prepare him to do well whatever an 
intelligent and upright man should do in all the relations of 
social and civil life; and any system of education which ac- 
complishes either more or less than this, is so far imperfect, 
or preposterous and pernicious. But, after all, the best 
schoolmasters are a mediocrity of fortune, and a country 
society virtuous, but not puritanical; religious, but not fanat- 
ical ; independent, but not rich; frugal, but not penurious; 
free, but not licentious — a society which exemplifies the 
harmony and value of industry and morality, republican 
simplicity and practical equality. 

"Reared in such a school, and practically instructed in the 
elements of useful knowledge, a man of good capacity, who 
enters on the business of life with no other fortune than his 
own faculties, and no other hope than his own honest efforts, 
can scarcely fail to become both useful and great. But he 
who embarks destitute of such tutelage, or freighted with 
hereditary honor or wealth, is in imminent danger of being 
wrecked in his voyage. Fortune and illustrious lineage are, 
but too often, curses rather than blessings. The industry 
and self-denial, which are indispensable to true moral and 
intellectual greatness, have been but rarely praticed without 
the lash of poverty, or the incentive of total self-independ- 
ence. " 

Believing that the true end of litigation, as of war, is peace, 
{pax quaerihirbdlo), when consulted about a controversy, he 
advised a settlement, if a fair compromise could be effected, 
before the passions of the parties had enlisted them, irretriev- 



154 LIFE OF GEORGE ROPERTSON. 



ably, in the conflict. If this could not be done, he enga^^ed, 
with untiring zeal, in the service of his client. Indefatigable 
at every stage of the contest, his ablest exhibitions were his 
addresses to the court. 

He never blazed with the splendid conflagration of Tully 
or of Curran, nor could he attack with the insidious and 
panther-like approaches of Plunkett ; he had not the com- 
manding presence and clarion voice of Clay. Several of his 
contemporaries excelled him in wit, invective, in brilliant 
episodes, and in stirring declamation. 

Although he was never a meteor, corruscating with a brill- 
iancy that dazzles afid blinds; nor "A Hesperus that (with 
borrowed splendor) led the starry train" — his light was more 
sustained and steady than the flash of the one, and unlike the 
sheen of the other; it was native as well as reflected. His 
purpose was not to shine, but to win. The judgment he 
sought was, not that he was a great man, but that his case 
was a good one — too plain in fact to require any skill in its 
management. Keeping himself as much as possible out of 
sight, and having perfect knowledge of the ground upon 
which every decisive contest must be made, and a dialectic 
skill that was never at a loss for middle terms, he assaulted 
with great force and apparent confidence one or more weak 
(or, if there were none such, strong) points in the position of 
his adversary. Whatever side he was on, if the result was 
doubtful, he boldly assumed the aggressive, in order to keep 
his opponent employed in his own defense. 

Taking no notes of evidence, and relying on but few au- 
thorities, he adduced reasons in profuse abundance, and none 
of them so frivolous as not to be plausible, for every propo- 
sition that he affirmed, and he responded immediately and 
forcibly to the objections and authorities of the opposite 
party. He freely indulged in fallacies, when he believed 
they would lead, though illogically, to a just judgment. 
Some of his discussions of dry propositions of law were, from 
their clearness, method, and ingenuity, more pleasing to 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 155 



cultivated minds than the most finished efforts of the rheto- 
rician. 

His discussions of facts were rapid, bold, often vehement, 
ingenious, and always plausible in bad cases, and conclusive 
in good ones. In fact, his ardor, grip, and resources seemed 
to increase with the difficulties which opposed him. Most 
of the witnesses of the exhaustless readiness and persistence 
with which he affirmed premises and drew inferences, are 
dead. Some now living may not have forgotten how 
" He could veer and tack and steer a cause 
Against the weather-guage of laws," 

as shown in the remarkable contest between Mr. Clay and 
himself over the instructions in an action against the client 
of the latter for selling plated bagging, or bagging that was 
of better quality on the outside of the bale than on the inside. 
The argument was protracted three days, and exhausted all 
that could be said for and against the proposition — custom 
makes law. 

He was not of a polemical disposition, and was not fond of 
the practice of law. This is proved by the fact that he re- 
mained so long upon the bench, when, with less labor, he 
could have reaped mcalculably greater rewards at the bar. 
He disliked the personalities of the bar, and preferred to ap- 
pear in courts of equity and in revisory courts, rather than 
before juries. His speeches in court were in form and in 
matter very similar to his written opinions as a Judge. Both 
were conceived with marvellous rapidity and lucidly, always 
accurately, and often beautifully expressed. The only one of 
his addresses to the jury now remaining, is his speech in 
defence of Dr. Abner Baker. This is a fair specimen of his re- 
sources. Some of his regular clients were those against 
whom he had been employed, and who had felt his strength. 
Among these was an old man of property, who having no fam- 
ily but a wife, for whom he had a great aversion, and who being 
determined to devise his estate to some other person, impor- 
tunately besought Mr. Robertson to be that person ; but he 



156 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

firmly refused to accede to this request, on the ground that 
his honor as a man and a lawyer woukPnot permit him to do 
so, and the estate was finally given to an entire stranger to 
the testator. Mr. Robertson, though gratified at his self- 
denial in this instance, deplored the circumstances that made 
it imperativ^e. 

His facility was very great as a special pleader and convey- 
ancer. Believing the science of pleading to be the logic of 
the common law, as showing what was necessary to be 
affirmed and proved, he directed the attention of his pupils 
to it at an early period of their progress All instruments of 
writing drawn by him are distinguished for their brevity, 
clearness, and accuracy. He knew what was essential in the 
accepted forms, and therefore never used a form or any 
superfluous word, although its employment might be conse- 
crated by immemorial usage. And as he wrote in the small 
and compact, but legible hand, which some have called the 
Virginia hand, a specimen of which may be seen in the man- 
uscripts of Mr. Jefferson, and which possibly they and others 
derived from a common source, namely, Joshua Fry. His 
deeds and pleadings were contained in a \ery small compass. 
As a conveyancer, he did not consider it necessary for his 
own safety or that of his client, to assume an attitude directly 
hostile to every title which he was called to examine. He 
knew, as Dr. Johnson has said, that there were objections to 
a plenum [and also to a vacuum, but that one or the other 
was true, and that extraordinary ingenuity or ordinary igno- 
rance might raise objections to the best title. Therefore, 
holding that it was as culpable and as hazardous to cast sus- 
picions on a good claim as it was to misrepresent a bad one, 
he sought not, through excess of caution, to defeat, but de- 
sired rather to uphold the transfers of property that had been 
in good faith acquiesced in. His investigations were careful, 
his interpretations liberal, and while in his professional capa- 
city, he caused little or no interruption to the business 
transactions of the country, no complaint was ever made 
against him for wrong advice or for mal-practice. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 157 

He was in no sense a timid la\\}er If he had not had 
strong confidence in his abihty to advise and to act, his sense 
of duty would have compelled him to retire from the bar. 
When he came to the bar, and for long afterwards, the dis- 
tinction between professional opposition and personal hostility 
was exceedingly obscure. Still, though one of the most 
peaceable and courteous of men, he never hesitated, from 
regard for the consequences to himself, because the opposite 
party w-as powerful or dangerous, or his attorney \\as a 
ruffian, to undertake a case, or denounce a wrong; and when 
dispatch was urgent, and the efificiency of the sheriff was 
doubtful, he has been known to go with him and recapture 
property illegally taken. 

He was f?.shioned on too large a scale to be a mere lawyer, 
and often spoke of the intimate relations of various knowl- 
edges, and illustrated the quaint saying, that the sparks of 
all the sciences are raked up in the ashes of the law. Nor 
was he content to explore one system of law. Among the 
first books he ever owned are a Latin copy of Justinian's 
Institutes, Pothier on Obligations, and Vattell's Law of Na- 
tions. Many of his terms, illustrations, and reasons are 
drawn from the civil law. He placed a high estimate upon 
Comyn's Digest, the writings of Pothier, and the English 
ecclesiastical reports. The latter, according to his judgment, 
contained some of the finest models of judicial style. Not 
inconsistent with his regard for general knowledge, he thought 
that a large collection of law books was apt to embarrass and 
enfeeble, and his own library was more select than numerous. 
He trusted more to rumination than to reading, and the 
''cave cancjn," to which he sometimes pointed his pupils, 
in the atrium of the law, was the maxim, "Beware the man 
of one book." 

THE TEACHER OF LAW. 

No one can be a first rate law)'er ^\■ho does not maintain a 
clear knowledge of elementary principles, which consist 
chiefly of definitions and propositions, which denote the divis- 



158 LIFE OF GFORGE ROBERTSON. 



ions, classes, or combinations into which rules of law have 
been or may be arranged. It was by teaching that Judge 
Robertson refreshed and constantly extended his analytical 
apprehension of the law. He taught because he loved to 
teach, and because teaching was one of the best modes of 
learning. While he w^as a young man his reputation attracted 
students Irom this and other States to solicit his instructions. 
He cheerfully gave them the use of his library and the aid of 
his learning free of charge. For a long time after he had 
retired from the law school of Transylvania, he continued to 
instruct classes of from fifteen to thirty. That school, when 
he and Judge Mayes, and afterwards, when he and Judge 
WooUey and Marshall were its professors, attained a high 
and deserved reputation. Its roll of matriculates was greater 
than that of any other law school in the United States. 

His mode of instruction was by oral examinations and 
comments upon a text His questions were frequently in 
the form of a sorites, each one being a deduction from a pre- 
ceding one. In this way the pupil was led to prove prop- 
ositions which, perhaps, at first he denied or doubted. His 
comments were full and so lucid that, to the superficial or 
ignorant, they seemed to be superficial, because he made 
intricate doctrines plain. He inaugurated each course of 
lectures by a pubhc introductory. These were published by 
the successive classes. The first of these coming to the 
hands of Mr. Webster, drew from him this kind note: 

Washington, Dec'r 16, 1835. 
My Dear Sir: 

I hope it is to your own remembrance and kindness that I 
am indebted for a copy of your truly excellent Introductory 
Lecture. I have read it with much pleasure. I have for- 
warded it to my son, a student in the Profession 

I hear so much of you, my dear sir, and know so much, 
that I heartily wish we might meet, face to face. Though I 
remember to have seen you in Washington, I hardly know 
whether we were in each other's company more than once. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 159 



Will you not come and look at us in the North? You would 
find many who would be truly glad to see you. 

I pray you remember me to Mr. Letcher, and believe that 
I am, with cordial regard. 

Yours, 

Dan'l Webster. 
Ch. Jus. Robertson. 

He felt a lively regard for the welfare and advancement of 
his pupils, and entertained them (as did the other Professors) 
often and handsomely at his house. Mutual and enduring 
reo-ard was the result of their intercourse. He labored not 
onlv to teach them municipal law, but also conservative pnn- 
ciples and legal etchics, and so far as known, all of them have 
led honorable, and some of them, distinguished lives. Prob- 
ably the greatest benefit he conferred upon his country was 
as a teacher. The effect of the moral and intellectual forces 
that he assisted to train and direct can never be estimated 
The following words of his show the regard which he had for 

his pupils: 

"Whatever maybe your destiny, may you ever cherish 
fraternal sympathies for each other, and a filial remembrance 
of your Alma Mater. She will never cease to feel a deep 
interest in all that concerns you, and in whatsoever you may 
do, or may be; and it will rejoice her to hear of your pros- 
perity and honest fame. May she, like Berecinthia, be now 
and always — 



'K 



Felix prole viriuii '^ '^ ^ 

>ic >■< * -li =K :!' ^ 

Proud of her sons, she lifts her head on high, 
Proud as the mighty mother of the sky — 
^ ;i< * ;|< _ 5!< >K ^ 

"And may we too be allowed to hope that you will not for- 
get us, nor neglect our precepts. If we have contributed to 
your improvement-, we shall be happy to hail you as sons, 
and to be long and kindly remembered ; and when our earth- 



l6o LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

ly course is finished, may \'ou, our cherished pupils and 
friends, still live to adorn, to save, and to bless our beloved 
country. 

"Though — after our approaching separation — we may not 
meet again on earth, yet, as we are taught to believe, it will 
not be long until we shall be re-assembled at the bar of Al- 
mighty God, to be severally judged for the deeds of our 
probationary pilgrimage. May the light of that day, like a 
bright fixed star, guide us from the snares through which we 
pass to the tomb, and cheer our hearts with a hope beyond 
the grave!" 



I. 

THE JUDGE. 
The Great Teacher's precept, "Judge not, that ye be not 
judged," though, probably, not intended in its prohibitory 
part to apply to the official judge, in its consequential part 
holds good especially as to him. He never judges without 
being judged. Every one has a right to know, and the op- 
portunity of knowing, all his judicial acts. Like the patri- 
archal arbiter of oriental nations, he sits in the gate — his 
courts are open, his rulings are public — star chambers and 
secret inquisitions are not of this age and land. Parties and 
attornies judge him because he judges them ; b}'-standers and 
others judge him because they may come under his jurisdic- 
tion. These particular judgments are abstracted, generalized, 
and perpetuated. Who ma}' be better supplied with digests, 
with types and examples, with parallels and antitheses of his 
subject, than the judge of a judge? Have not his publicity, 
his necessary interference in the affairs of others, and his pe- 
culiarities, made the justiciary of low and of high degree a 
favorite character of fiction, which honors his virtues and 
loves to deride his short comings? Who has not laughed at 
the justice Shallows of the drama, and the justice Starleighs of 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. l6l 



the novel, and commiserated imaginary victims of the tardi- 
ness, the costliness, and the uncertainty of courts? And has 
not history, with no truer or broader conception than fiction 
(which is the shadow of the real), but with more Nathan-like, 
thou art the man point, execrated, truckling subserviency, 
venality, imbecility, and brutality and extolled splendid inde- 
pendence, incorruptible fidelity, varied attainments and clear 
discernment in summing up the evidence whether the names 
of particular judges shall be inscribed in her pantheon, on 
the scrolls of glory or of infamy ? 

If the judge is the most judged, he is also often the worst 
judged of men. The qualities which he ought to have, many 
of his judges lack. They are frequently interested, and not 
seldom (and sometimes none the worse for him) incompetent. 
The ignorant, not less readily than the instructed, judge him. 
Individual judgments take their complexion from the tempers 
of the individuals, and of the times. Confident youth, igno- 
rant of nothing, tells his measure quickly, peremptorily, and 
extravagantly. Age, coupled with experience which knows 
but little, is apt to view him with circumspection and with 
charity. 

In piping times of peace, individual judgments of a bad 
judge may be deep but not loud, and be satisfied by ming- 
ling into a murmuring current of public opinion; in stormy 
times, individual judgments of a good judge may burst forth 
into "reorganizing acts," and into mobs. 

Who then is authorized to estimate the absolute qualities 
of a judge, and assign his relative place? It is not enough 
to know, as everybody knows, that he ought to be honest, 
have competent knowledge of law, "not be afraid of the face 
of men," be free from vices and wrongs which the law con- 
demns, be diligent, patient, and as delay is a species of in- 
justice, be able to reach conclusions and assign sufficient 
reasons for them, with dispatch. To know what a thing 
ought to be, and to know what it is, are, b}- no means, 
identical propositions. If the}' were, impostor and kindred 



lO 



1 62 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



words might be dropped from our speech. Law, not less 
than theology, philosophy, and art, has its esoteric language 
and doctrines. A critical knowledge of his judicial rulings, 
which is the crucial test of a great judge, must be confined 
to the initiated and laborious few, whose business it is to 
explore, to apply, and to evade them. After long and close 
attention to the judgments and history of the bench, and to 
the lives of the strongest and the feeblest, the best and the 
basest, who have adorned or disgraced it, had fitted him to 
approve or to condemn forensic proceedings, with at least a 
formidable show of facts and of reasons, Judge Robertson, 
upon proper occasions, guardedly expressed his opinions of 
the comparative merits of other judges. A like careful con- 
sideration is due to his own course. One of the chief and 
less obvious qualifications of a good judge is his ability to 
think. In considering the thinking faculty regard must be 
had not only to the quality of the thoughts that is to the 
degree of generality of the ideas, the degree of definiteness 
of the ideas, the degree of coherence of the ideas, but also to 
the amount or volume of the ideas. Mechanical forces are 
compared and measured by the quantity of motion, which 
they respectively produce in a given time, so in estimating 
the relative vigor of minds the quantity of work done must 
be taken into the account. A man of ordinary ability may 
accomplish a particular result, in a long time or with needful 
helps, in a better manner than one greatly his superior could 
do it, in a short time and under less favorable circumstances. 
Single speech Hamilton's sole effort may have been equal to 
any one of thousand speech Brougham, but as Hamilton 
took his own time to elaborate his speech, and never made 
but the one, it would be unfair to rank him with Brougham, 
who could make a good speech upon any subject at any- 
time. 

The trickling waters of a brook, if pent up with weirs and 
locks, slowly swell into ponds as deep as the ordinary chan- 
nel of a river. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 163 



To call a judge, as Lord Eldon was called, a doubter, is at 
best, but equivocal praise; habitual doubt implies delay, if 
not inconsistency. To call him a Lingerer is not expressive 
of merit. To say of a general, as was said of Fabius, ''Unus 
homo, nobis, cunctando irni rcstitiat," maybe a high eulogy; to 
apply the same words to a slow judge, would be a severe 
rebuke. In comparing decisions of different courts, with 
reference to the ability of the judges, the number of judges 
composing each, the attainments and industry of their several 
attornies, the amount and character of their business, the 
time occupied in disposing of it, and the amount of compensa- 
tion of the judges, as upon this may depend their exemption 
from many distracting cares, must all be considered. In all 
these, and perhaps in other respects, the Supreme Court of 
the United States has the advantage of most, perhaps, of all 
other courts in the Union. The Federal Courts are better 
paid, their cases are better prepared and argued by attornies, 
and although they may not display "a masterly inactivity," 
which defeats the purposes of litigation, they take more time 
for deliberation than would be patiently tolerated in a State 
judge. The Kentucky Court of Appeals, during most of the 
time Judge Robertson was connected with it, consisted of 
but three judges, who were so ill paid as to have to resort to 
other means of making a living, and so hard pressed as to 
have but little time to devote to single cases; its bar was 
never without able lawyers, but very many of the cases were 
hastily and imperfectly prepared. His first labors were 
peculiarly arduous. Judge Underwood, a pure and wise 
citizen, who yet lives to enjoy the consciousness of a well 
spent life and the respect of his countrymen, and he, were 
the only judges. And to them had been left a large and 
unwelcome legacy of old cases, amounting to not less than 
one thousand. He was inexperienced, and his fitness for 
this, as for every other place which he ever held, was to be 
tried by watchful partisans and jealous aspirants. The feel- 
ings provoked by a long and bitter contest of parties for the 



164 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON, 

possession of this court had not subsided. Though the sala- 
ry, less than that of an ordinary clerk or the judge of a petty 
police court of the present day, and much of this was con- 
sumed in paying the expenses of the judges in term time, 
would now be considered grossly inadequate to the toils and 
responsibilities of the office, still the position had been made 
honorable by illustrious names, and the men of that day 
resembled in many respects the old Romans, who never 
received any pecuniary reward for serving their country, 
(Judge R.'s reasons for accepting the office may be found 
elsewhere in this volume.) 

He had won distinction as a political writer and speaker, 
and had rapidly become conspicuous at the bar, but there is 
not much affinity between politics and law, and although it 
may be difficult to determine in what the diversity consists, 
there is a well recognized difference between the mental gifts 
and acquirements of an able judge, and those of an effective 
practitioner. Great advocates have made poor judges, emi- 
nent judges have. failed at the bar, both before and after their 
elevation to the bench. If it be said that the chief mental 
process of the judge is inference, of the advocate proof, that 
the one inquires, the other affirms, the one asks what is A., 
the other says that A. is B., that the one begins with the 
premises, the other starts from the conclusion. That the 
reasoning of the one is from particular propositions to general 
ones, and that of the other deductive, still they seem to 
travel the same road, but in different directions. Whatever 
may be the difference. Judge Robertson, by applying himself 
during almost all the hours of the day and night, with an 
assiduity that injured his eyes, and would have broken down 
any but an iron constitution, rapidly dispatched, with the 
assistance of his distinguished associate, the accumulated 
business of the court, and soon vindicated his right to his 
position, and his claim to be considered an able judge. His 
earliest decisions show that his legal learning was both com- 
prehensive and accurate. In the cases of Breckinridge's heirs 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 165 



V. Ormsby, and Lampton's Ex. v. Preston's Ex., are exhib- 
ited the same perspicacity and completeness that are found in 
his later opinions. 

Opinions running through twenty-five volumes of the re- 
ports, well argued, often exhaustive, though betraying marks 
of haste, resulting from pressure of business, show that he 
performed his full share of the known duties of the court, 
but do not disclose his labors in deciding- the far p-reater 
number of cases which have never been published. He 
never neglected any official duty, and is not known to have 
ever been absent from his post, unless he was personally 
interested in the matter under consideration, until after he 
had been attacked with the malady which ended his life. 

He understood and administered the law, not as a collec- 
tion of arbitrary and detached points, but as a rational and 
harmonious system. That empiricism, whose school is ex- 
perience, whose only lesson is examples, does not belong to 
any one profession. There are attornies and judges whose 
stock of learning consists of practical rules and forms, whose 
writings are copies, whose reasons are ipse dixits. and who 
often have the enviable readiness and accuracy of light 
weights on a beaten road, but who, unguided by general 
propositions, are, when left without "an ancient saw or a 
modern instance," apt to mistake the sign or circumstance 
for the source, the accident for the substance, and to draw 
conclusions as trustless as the post hoc ergo propter hoc infer- 
ence of Master More's aged man, viz: That Tenterden 
steeple was the cause of Goodwin quicksands, for the reason 
that the one was built before the other appeared. In describ- 
ing a man of this type, G. S. Mill remarks. "Almost every 
one knows Lord Mansfield's advice to a man of practical 
good sense, who, being appointed Governor of a colony, had 
to preside in its court of justice, without previous judicial 
practice or legal education, the advice was, to give his 
decision boldly, for it would probably be right, but never to 
venture on assigning reasons, -for they would almost infallibly 



1 66 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



be wrone. In cases like this, which are of no uncommon 
occurrence, it would be absurd to suppose that the bad rea- 
son was the source of the rrood decision. Lord Mansfield 
knew that if any reason were assigned, it would probably be 
an after thought. The judge being in fact guided by im- 
pressions from past experience, without the circuitous process 
of framing general principles from them, and that if he at- 
tempted to frame such he would assuredly fail. However 
Lord Mansfield would not have doubted that a man of equal 
experience, who had also a mind stored with general princi- 
ples, would have been greatly preferable as a judge, to one 
who could not be trusted with the explanation and justifica- 
tion of his own judgments." 

These artisans, who are the bulk of every profession, owe 
their practical skill to the loftier labors of a far higher order 
of minds. The thinker must precede the craftsman. The 
mass of accountants apply a calculus, all practical men em- 
ploy rules, which they neither could have invented nor 
understand. They accept results without reasons. They 
are, at best, but plane glasses, which pass the light as they 
recieved it, or with some loss of brightness, greater minds, by 
refracting the dispersed rays into a focus, give a near and 
distinct view of their source. Judge Robertson deserves to 
be classed with those lawyers who have inductively reduced 
many points to a comparatively few propositions, and have 
administered the law as a deductive science, which, with 
some exceptions, growing out of eccentric decisions and 
meddlesome statutes, that are repugnant to its genius, may 
be exhibited in the telescopic form of successive propositions, 
each of which is contained in the next preceding one, and all 
in the first. Hence, though the laws which he has expound- 
ed may be repealed, and the precise facts which he has 
interpreted may never recur, his opinions, from the elemen- 
tary truths which they explain, must, like fossil remains of 
the extinct mastodon, exhibiting marks of design and proving 
final causes, continue to engage and instruct the philosophic 
student. 



life; of GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1 6/ 



To show that he did rapidly detect the true and essential 
resemblances of detached and, to the ordinary observer, dis- 
cordant particulars of fact and of law, and refer them to, and 
derive them from, a common source, would require lar.ge 
numbers of his decisions to be arranged in groups or in trains 
according to the ideal thread or vinculum that connects them. 
This can not be done here, but as some have thought that 
'he, at least in his earlier opinions, generalized too much, and 
sometimes subordinated particular rules to the harmony of 
the law as a whole, and as a man's wrong conclusions may 
be supposed to afford the severest test of his reasoning pow- 
ers, an attempt w^ill be made to show the logical relation to 
his other opinions that have been sustained, of the only two 
of his judgments of any general importance that are known 
to have been overruled, and show that in furtherance of indi- 
vidual rights and particular justice, by a strict and sound 
discrimination, he pointed out exceptions to broad and well 
■established principles. 

One of the first generalizations which a judge must make 
is an abstract expression or formula of the grounds of legal 
responsibility, because this must be at least a tacit premiss 
oi most of his judgments, and he whose business it is to in- 
terpret the laws and enforce them, should not take the place 
of the legislator. The difference between their functions is 
•clearly defined. They move in the same direction, but the 
law-maker leads the other, except where the organic law is 
violated, follows. The one enquires what is necessary, or 
expedient, or morally right or wrong? The other abjures all 
allegiance to "higher law," or what ought to be law, and to 
-casuistry and political necessity. To the law, as it is, his 
fealty is complete, he has sworn "to be its man of life and 
limb, and terrene honor." Judge Robertson has very often 
recognized this view of the duties of the judiciary, especially 
in his elaborate review of the Dred Scott case, and in the 
conclusion of his masterly argument on the legal tender ques, 
tion, he says:— " Persuaded that w^e are right, no apprehen- 



I 68 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



sion of inconvenient consequences, merely fiscal nor of human 
responsibility could excuse the announcement of any opinion 
which is not conscientiously our own. To guard the consti- 
tution is the highest trust of the judiciary; and thinking as 
we do, were we to bow to any other power than the law as 
we understand it, we should feel guilty of a criminal breach 
of trust, a shameful dereliction of our post. * * * Public 
necessity is an arbitrary and unsafe dictator, and to save 
while salvable, from its lawless dominion, an upright judiciary 
should now, if ever, self-sacrificingly, if need be, illustrate 
the righteous maxim of Christian patriotism, ' Fiat jiistitia 
mat cccluui.' " 

Legal responsibility is, therefore, the result of the losrical 
agreement of the law and the facts, and as law precedes obli- 
gation, the next step of the inquiry is to ascertain what is 
proof of the law. There is a familiar distinction between 
what is called conclusive and persuasive evidence, and the 
question has often been raised whether any single judicial 
decision is conclusive evidence of the law in any case, except 
the one in which it was rendered. In all countries where 
the common law prevails, many judgments of the highest 
courts have been overruled or modified. This amounts to a 
recognition of the fact that judges are neither Pontiffs, who 
cannot err, nor Kings, who can do no wrong. The judici- 
ary, as has been before said, cannot make laws, they can only 
expand them by application to new cases. They do, how- 
ever, if unconfirmed judgments are conclusive, often, by a 
hasty, ill considered, illogical conclusion, by overlooking 
authorities or disregarding facts, both make laws and repeal 
them. Whatever may be the dividing line between the au- 
thority of precedents and the authority of reason, it cannot 
be denied that the latter holds a prominent place in a science 
which professes to be the perfection of reason and the col- 
lected wisdom of ages. As Judge Robertson's views on this 
subject have sometimes been misapprehended, his own clear 
statement of them will be quoted. In speaking of the malle- 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. ' 1 69 

ability of the common law, he said: — "An adjudged point, 
unreasonable or inconsistent with analogy or principle, should 
not be regarded as conclusive evidence of the law, unless it 
shall have been long acquiesced in, or more than once af- 
firmed — and unless, on a survey of all material considerations, 
you feel that it is better to adhere to it, than, by overturning 
it, to produce uncertainty and surprise. Stare decisis 
should be thus and only thus understood and applied. Sta- 
bility and uniformity require that authority, even when con- 
flicting with principle, should sometimes decide what the law 
is. But, in all questionable cases, follow the safer guides — 
reason and the harmony of the law in all its parts. 

"In consequence of which, it has been greatly improved 
from age to age by judicial modifications corresponding with 
its reason and the spirit of the times, yet the judge who 
leaves it as he finds it is at least a safe depository. He is neith- 
er a Mansfield nor a Hardwicke — he is more like Hale and 
Kenyon. If he does not improve, he does not mar or un- 
hinge the law. It is safer and more prudent to err sometimes 
in the recognition of an established doctrine of the law, than 
to make innovation by deciding upon principle against the 
authority of judicial precedents." 

In a response to a petition in one of his earlier cases he 
says: — "The practice we have discontinued was unreason- 
able ; it was peculiar to this State ; it could not promote the 
ends of justice ; it would frequently promote injustice and 
irreparable injury without any reason for it. The rule was 
old, but its antiquity alone does not commend it. It is not 
sacred and inviolable merely because it is ancient; error is 
not less error because it is gray with age. Time, which 
makes it venerable, renders it more alarming and mischiev- 
ous. " Still he would not disregard the nicest distinctions 
when founded on authority and principle. For example, he 
decided that a writing acknowledging the receipt of a note 
for collection was not a covenant to pay the money over 
when collected, and afterwards decided that in such case an 



tyO LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



assumpsit will be implied to pay within a reasonable time 
after collection. 

It still remains to find a common expression for the facts 
that are essential to every legal obligation. The correspond- 
ence between the law and the facts, however it may differ in 
degree or in circumstances, is in every case essentially the 
same in kind. The nature of this agreement can be found 
by ascertaining what a municipal law is. It is, at the least, 
an authoritative command, addressed to intelligent beings, 
requiring them to do or not do a particular act. Its subject 
is mind, its object an act. The doing or not doing is ob- 
viously composed of two elements, namely, will, intention, 
consent (for each of these terms is used according to circum- 
stances to denote the mental operation which is regarded), 
and a physical deed or external act. In this country, inten- 
tions alone have never imposed obligations, or been a cause 
of punishment. 

And the doctrines of fraud, mistake duress, and mental 
alienation, show that involuntary acts have no greater effect. 
These two therefore seem to be co-ordinates, by which the 
facts are to be measured. But the intent or volition is the 
unseen complement of the act of which the external conduct 
and circumstances are the signs or effects. Hence great part 
of practical law consists in weighing and applying presump- 
tions. From what can be directly proved the mental opera- 
tion must be inferred according to probabilities founded on 
experience. To expedite the application of these presump- 
tions, and to secure the attainment of at least general truth, 
law gives to certain facts a conclusive and fixed effect, to 
others only the importance which they should have when 
taken in connection with all the circumstances, and requires 
that others shall be the only evidence of certain conclusions. 
These artificial rules of evidence have a tendency to sacrifice 
individual interests for the common welfare, and have, in the 
opinion of many, been carried to an unwarrantable extent, 
and to destroy some of them and modify others, legislation 
has been invoked. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. I 7 I 

Judge Robertson passed much of his judicial Hfe in sifting, 
defining, sometimes restricting, but never or rarely enlarging 
these judicial and statutory devices, that give to some signs, 
causes, and effects of intention, a conclusive, and to others 
no weight or a fixed or partial one. Knowing that the inno- 
cent had fallen victims to constructive treasons, constructive 
libels, constructive capacity, constructive fraud, and presump- 
tive murder, and that a trifling interest would not make every 
witness a liar, and that every common carrier was not by nature 
or occupation a thief, and that the assumption that every man 
knows the law was not, in any instance, true to its whole 
extent and not in some instances true to any extent, and 
that all married women and minors are not in fact incapable 
of contracting, and that politic enactments, such as the 
statute of frauds and of fraudulent conveyances, sometimes 
operated oppressively, and having considered the husband's 
liability for torts by his wife, and the master's for misfea- 
sances and malfeasances of his servant, and the servant's 
accountability to his fellow servant in the same or in a differ- 
ent employment. He looked upon these and other numerous 
and vast artifices that had been brought within the walls of 
jurisprudence, if not with the suspicion of a Laocoon, with a 
circumspection that tried all their ribs and sounded their hol- 
lows. And regarding science as a unit, be endeavored to 
give these presumptions their proper place as members of 
the science of law. 

Satisfying himself that the intervention of mind is essential 
to legal responsibility, and that legal presumptions, which 
are generalizations of particular or natural presumptions, like 
ready-made clothing, cut upon a calculation of mean propor- 
tions or averages, and which fit the various members of the 
classes or sizes for which they were designed, with unequal 
degrees of accuracy, are only expressions of approximate 
truth, and in some of their applications of untruth, he seems 
to have held that they were to be rigidly applied only so far 
as they had been rigidly established, but not extended ev^en 



172 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

.to analogous cases. He also saw as the law was deductive, 
commencing with a single definition and spreading into nu- 
merous branches, that the extremes of related subjects run 
into each other, and also that different ramifications, to a 
greater or less extent, interlap and seem to conflict, in so 
much that in well arranged digests it is impossible to tell, in 
the first instance, under which of several heads to look for 
propositions common to all. Whenever the matter under 
consideration occupied this debatable ground, he assigned it 
to that title, and disposed of it according to the law of that 
which he thought was most rational and j^jst, and in this way 
appeared to modify existing laws when he only reconciled 
them. 

* * * ^Yg ^,-j(j |-]^^|- |-|-^jg critique must be a nut without 

its kernel. Hamlet, with Hamlet left out — a conclusion from 
suppressed premises. A somewhat elaborate attempt has 
been made by an analysis and harmony of cases to elucidate 
and verify the foregoing statements, but many a tale, ' ' like 
Cambuscan's bold," must be left half told. This book ap- 
proaches its prescribed limits, and we sacrifice the abstracts 
in preference to other matter. Space may be afforded to 
show the general tenor of that which has been omitted. The 
purpose was to show what effect Judge R. gave to actual 
and artificial or constructive intent in the most diverse cases, 
and how, without violence to the law, when two or more 
well established principles conflicted in a particular case, he 
selected the one which he thought was most just and rational. 
Among others, the following facts were brought forward. 
In pursuance of the settled proposition, fraud shall not be 
presumed, he repudiated the distinction, taken in early Ken- 
tucky cases between a suppressio veii and a suggestio falsi, 
which required evidence of knowledge of the truth in the one 
case and not in the other, and affirmed that (actual) fraud is 
a wilful misrepresentation of facts, or a fraudulent conceal- 
ment of them, with a view to deceive, and that a party, by 
making representations of facts which he honestly believes 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1/3 



to be true, is guilty of no moral turpitude and incurs no legal 
responsibility. The maxim fnat no man shall stultify him- 
self, or that every man shall be treated as sane, had been 
shaken, but not overturned. So soon as he came upon the 
bench, 'he discarded it in civil cases, on the ground that the 
proposition affirming a contract to be an agreement, aggre 
(gatio) vicnt (tium), or contunence of winds, is at least equally 
well established, equally ancient, and far more rational. 
When he came to examine that other outpost of expediency, 
namely, ignorance of law excuses no man, he, for the first 
time (so far as we know), qualified it, or rather harmonized 
it with the indisputable principle, that every contract must 
have a consideration, by deciding that where it is perfectly 
evident that the only consideration of an alleged agreement 
was a mistake of the legal rights and obligations of the par- 
ties, and when there has been no fair compromise o{ bona fide 
and doubtful claims, the agreement may be avoided on the 
ground of total want of consideration or mutuality. This is 
as far as he would sustain a mistake of law, and it has ever 
since been recognized as the true principle. Under statutes 
creating constructive frauds, while he made particular facts 
evidence of intent, so far as the statutes and repeated decis- 
ions had fixed their import, he denied that a like inferential 
effect should be given to new or slightly different facts. 
Pressed by cogent argument, he refused to apply the statute 
of fraudulent conveyances to a case, in which the convey- 
ance was made, not by the debtor or of his estate, but by 
another person, at the instance and with the money of the 
debtor, and maintained that as the common law will not 
presume fraud, a conveyance procured by a father, in consid- 
eration of his money, to be made to his children, will not at 
common law, or under the statute, be deemed fraudulent, 
from the fact alone that he was indebted at the time. That 
he sustained well settled artificial rules of evidence, to their 
full extent, may be seen in his dissent, which has the urgency 
of a remonstrance, from the decision of a majority of the court 



174 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



that on oral proof of a mistake in drawing a deed, the con- 
veyance can not only be set aside, but that the deed may be 
reformed and then specifically enforced. Likewise, though 
doubting the policy of the statute making retention of pos- 
session by the seller of a chattel, fraud per se, he never 
swerved from it, however he differed from subsequent judges 
as to what constitutes change of possession. Can a man at 
law contract with himself? If the presumptions upholding 
the execution and consideration of writing's seem to affirm 
that he may, the idea of an agreement, expressed in the say- 
ing, It takes two to make a bargain, affirm as decisively that 
he cannot. A and B make their promissory note, which, 
by the law of Kentucky is a specialt)', to one of themselves, 
A. A majority of the court, Judge Robertson being one, 
decided that a contract is the reciprocal consent of two or more 
minds to do or not do a particular thing, that therefore A 
could not make an enforcible obligation to pay himself, and 
that, at law, contracts were not apportionable, and each joint 
obligor was primarily liable for the whole amount, without 
denying that B might have relief in equity, he was required 
to pay the whole. This decision has been repeatedly fol- 
lowed. Where there has been no mistake or fraud, and 
where there is no assignment and no relation between an 
original party and the claimant, can the claimant be presump- 
tively substituted in the place of a party expressly named in 
the obligation? A, and B, his surety, make their promissory 
note to C, a bank, to enable A to raise money on it. C 
refuses to accept the note or furnish the funds. A delivers 
the note to D, who advances the money. Is B liable to D on 
the note? If leaving the name of the obligor blank implies 
authority to fill the blank with any name, inserting a partic- 
ular name must be, at least, an implied denial of the right to 
insert any other name. An accommodation party has a 
right to select his creditor, and if he do name him, why should 
not the maxim, exprcssio iinius cxcbisio altcrius ^.^'i^Xy? He 
may have abundant reasons for his choice, which are not an- 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1/5 

swered by the assertion that the instrument in the hands of 
the obhgee would be assignable. For example: he may 
have reasons to expect accommodation or indulgence from 
the party named ; may have a set off against his claim, or 
may be unwilling that his own name should be hawked in 
the market. Every purchaser of the note knows from its 
face who the payee is, and must be presumed to know the 
law of derivative parties. According to that law no one but 
the payee can assign the legal title to the note, and to ena- 
ble an action to be maintained by relation, the relator C 
must have the legal title. If a note be indorsed to the 
maker, the indorsement extinguishes it; the maker's in- 
dorsement will not revive it, but will create a new obligation. 
The refusal of the note by the payee is a much stronger fact 
for the maker. In the one case it is returned to the maker 
because it has ceased to be obligatory ; in the other case be- 
cause it never was obligatory. Until a recent statute the 
law was, that the indorsement by the maker of a note, pay- 
able to his own order, was mere evidence of a previous 
indebtedness. The ingenuity and force of the argument in 
this case (Conway z'. The Bank of the U. S.), cannot be 
exhibited in an abridged form. This decision, after standing 
many years, has been repeatedly overruled, for reasons which 
do not very satisfactorily appear. Proof of homicide creates, 
in the first instance, the presumption of murder. May this 
presumption be to any extent repelled b)- proof that the ac- 
cused, by his own act, was drunk? According to an early 
Kentucky decision, drunkenness, unless produced by the 
adverse party, with a fraudulent intent, by which he gained 
an undue advantage, could not be shown in avoidance of a 
contract. Subsequent decisions of the same court establish 
that drunkenness, which renders the party incompetent to 
contract, however it may have been produced, will defeat the 
contract. Why apply one rule in civil, another in criminal 
cases? The basis of the obligations to keep one's word, and 
to abstain from unlawful violence, are the same. Intelligent 



176 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

will is at the bottom of both. Drunkenness produces every 
deeree of mental aberation and alienation. If it be said that 
drunkenness is intentional or wilful, and the drunkard a vol- 
luitaritts demo, it may be replied, that in many instances it is 
the accidental surprise of temperate and upright men, who 
drink for social enjoyment, or its victim, impelled by a re- 
sistless appetite that is sometimes congenital or acquired from 
the cordials administered in infancy or sickness, or stimulants 
taken as a relief against misfortunes, is pursued by a nemesis 
as unrelenting and fatal as the destiny of wretched and inno- 
cent house of Labdacus. As to his being a voluntary 
demon, the answer is, that although a frequent antecedent 
and cause of crime, still the relation between drunken- 
ness and crime is neither so intimate nor so frequent as to 
create any presumption that drunkenness is produced with a 
view to commit crime. The objection that the decisions of 
courts uniformly held drunkenness not to be allowable in 
mitigation, is met by the statement, that the question had 
never been decided by a court of errors in Kentucky, and the 
British decisions were coeval with, and founded upon, the 
same extreme notions of expediency with the overruled doc- 
trine that no man can stultify himself. 

With regard to the expedienc}' of admitting drunkenness 
in mitigation, it was urged that this was a more proper ques- 
tion for the Legislature than for courts, and that as manners 
control laws, a people who refuse to prohibit or punish drunk- 
enness will not, under an}- instructions of courts, be likely to 
ignore it in the framing of verdicts. 

That drunkenness, in at least some cases and for some 
purpose, was admissible in criminal cases, was the logical 
sequence of very many of Judge Robertson's opinions. Not 
bemg a man who could halt midway in an argument, or 
refuse to apply a conclusion which he had labored so often 
to establish, he rendered the opinion of the court, that under 
proper qualifications, drunkenness, resulting from a desire 
for social enjoyment, or sensual gratification, may be given 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. \-jJ 



in evidence, under the pica of not guilty, to a charge of 
murder, and may, if from all circumstances the jury shall so 
consider, reduce the offense to manslaughter. This is as far 
as he was asked to go, and regarding expediency as not a 
subject of judicial consideration, or whatever is right to be 
expedient, the conclusion is inevitable. 

His opinions penetrate into almost every department of 
jurisprudence. Those upon the meaning of statutes, and 
upon rules of practice and pleading, exhibit his ingenuity 
and capacity for details, but those upon the leading princi- 
ples of equity, constitutional, and international law, give 
most room for his discursive powers, and show to the best 
advantage the range and rigor of his intellect and the extent 
of his erudition. 

The kind and arrangement of a man's words are a good 
index to some of the qualities of his mind. The style of an 
obscure thinker is never clear, nor of a slow one rapid, nor 
of a dull one brilliant. Judge Robertson could clothe his 
thought*^ in different garbs, according to the subject and the 
occasion. They have appeared in the curt and gladiatorial 
dress of Junius, in the homespun of Bunyan and Cobbet, 
in the flowing robe of the historian of his own name, and in 
the ample and stately toga of Gibbon. The style of his 
opinions was his ordinary style ; he adopted and adhered to it, 
because it was the language and idiom in which he thought, 
and because it required no elaboration. It bears no resem- 
blance to that of his associates or predecessors, and can be 
detected at once. He wrote as fast as he could perform the 
manual part, without erasures or interlineation, and never 
revised. Many of his longest opmions were struck out at a 
single heat, and he either thought that alterations would 
emasculate the first strong expressions, or his time was too 
much occupied to permit him to attend to the refinements of 
composition. His opinions were thought out, often, when 
he was in a recumbent position, with closed eyes, before he 

took up his pen. Whatever may be the defects of his mode 
1 1 



1/8 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON, 

of expression it is grammatically correct, and so clear as to 
present his meaning with ease and precision. His opinions 
are among the easiest to digest that can be found. His 
style also is remarkable for its force ; he writes like a man 
who is in earnest. It has been said that his opinions betray 
feeling ; this is true ; they exhibit the feeling which is the re- 
sult and not the cause of strong convictions ; his cogent and 
diversified arguments show the source of his conclusions. 
Feeling of some kind must be behind every energetic style. 
It has been well said, "With a callous heart there can be no 
genius in the imagination, or wisdom in the mind ; and 
therefore the prayer, with equal truth and sublimity, says^ 
'incline our hearts unto wisdom.' Resolute thoughts find 
words for themselves, and make their own vehicle ; impres- 
sion and expression are relative ideas ; he who feels deeply 
will express strongly ; the language of light sensation is nat- 
urally feeble and superficial." 

Some have thought that a judge should be a bust truncated 
above the heart ; the mutilating paradox is false ; a judge 
of human conduct and motives must be a whole man, able 
to know, to feel, to will. 

Judge Robertson had a vivid imagination, which quick- 
ened and adorned his varied knowledge, and shed the light 
of copious illustration upon the intricate path of argument. 
All his arguments may not be correct, nor all his illustrations 
in good taste, but the luxuriant vegetation, which a fertile 
soil throws up, makes amends for the weeds, which, under 
the best culture, are mingled with its fruits and flowers. It 
has been suggested that he preferred to use words that are 
not of Saxon origin. If this be a fault, it is the fault of many 
graceful and vigorous writers. But upon examination it will 
be found that his terms are well selected and expressive. 
The law has a dialect of its own. The two laneuag-es in 
which it was first written, and in which its proceedings were 
conducted, and which have left imperishable traces upon its 
nomenclature, were neither of them Saxon. And although 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1/9 



Judge Robertson adopted many names and phrases from the 
early common law writers and from the civilians, he has 
taken none, which those for whom his judicial writings are 
intended, ought not readily to understand. Besides, the 
learned are not agreed that too much of importance has not 
been attributed to Anglo-Saxon blood, of which but little 
now remains, and to Anglo-Saxon words, which constitute 
but a small part of our vocabulary. 

The English language is made up of three principal, and 
many smaller, tributaries, whose combined volume is required 
to bear the intellectual commerce of this age. The Anglo- 
Saxon language ceased to grow before modern thought be- 
gan, and, like the language of every uncultivated people, it 
has names for little more than the commonest objects of 
sense. What is called English undefiled, is only peculiarly 
fitted to narrative and descriptive compositions, like those 
found in the Bible, in the works of Bunyan, and of De Foe. 
And the Bible, when it expounds abstract truths, resorts to 
such terms as predestination, sanctification, and justification, 
for which the primitive tongue affords no equivalents. Saxon 
words are no more fitted for the entire purposes of modern 
thought, than the painted vest, which Prince Vortigern won 
from a naked Pict, would be a suitable dress for all the occa- 
sions of modern society. His crowning merit as a judge was 
his high and unblemished probity. Every suitor received 
from him a patient and respectful hearing, an honest and 
well considered judgment. On the bench and elsewhere, 
however he may have fallen short of other men, or excelled 
them, he devoted his time and his energy to the discharge of 
his duties, and did the best that he was able to do. To him, 
without qualification, may be applied the noble lines of Dry- 
den : — 

"In isreal's courts ne'er sat an Ahethdin 
With more discerning eyes, or hands more clean, 
Unbribed, unsought the wretched to redress, 
Swift of dispatch, and easy of access" 



l80 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

— - _ . 

It is believed it could be said of George Robertson, as 
Alexander Severus said of Ulpian, that the laws could not go 
far astray while he was at the helm. And that the laws of 
Kentucky are not less wise and consistent, and her judicial 
reports less respected at home and abroad, from the fact that 
he sat so long and faithfully upon the bench of her highest 
court, and was the associate of so many true and gifted men, 
of whom Buckner, and Ewing, and Marshall, and Nicholas, 
and Hardin, are now his associates in death. His companion 
in youth, his first and probabl}^ his best beloved colleague, 
Judge Underwood, still lives. 

"May death not be jealous of the mild decay, 
Which gently win^ liim his." 



J. 
J. B. ROBERTSON. 

James B. Robertson was, if not the best, one of the best 
talkers of his day ; he was also a correct and ready writer. 
The only productions of his pen in my possession, are two 
faded letters, written in pencil, on long strips of printing 
paper. Even in these careless effusions may be found flashes 
ot his playful humor, and evidence of his fluency, as the fol- 
lowing extracts will show. The larger portions of these 
communications are descriptive of men and things, in dis- 
turbed times, and are too pungent, personal, and truthful, to 
be published now : 

Lexington, Feb. 14th, 1866. 
Dear Aleck: 

Yours of the 15th reached me with reasonable dispatch. 
I am exceedingly glad that my enclosures escaped the perils 
of the wayside, and afforded you so much satisfaction. I 
have sent you several of our papers, which, dull as they 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. l8l 



habitually are, will give you a fuller abstract of affairs here 
and hereabouts than I could hope to do with an unpractised 

pen. 

^ >i^ * 5i« * 5i< * 

The old gentleman is again at Frankfort. In his absence 
the place is almost exclusively surrendered to the negroes, 
of whom he is now subsisting a populous colony — no fewer 
than four able bodied women, two grown men, and one or 
two voracious picaninnies. I know nothing of their sump 
tuary arrangements, but imagine that it would require an 
army commissariat to keep such an establishment long upon 
its legs. The waste, pillaging, and vexation, must be enor- 
mous. * * * 1 have been unable to find the 
whereabouts of Wash, and presume that he has been for 
sometime dead. Jourdan, the patriarchal and pediculous, 
however still lives and— eats. Prayer is professedly his great 
consolation, and he did, for a time, essay to exist as Elijah 
and some of those old fellows did, a good while ago, but the 
experiment was unblessed, and he returned to his oats. A 
has a * * and barring interminable imbroglios with her 
"help," which she avers is no help at all, she seems to be 
o-ettino- alone about as well as her idiosyncracies of temper 
will permit. B has his commons at home, and contributes 
much the greater share to the maintainance of the concern. 
The C's seem to thrive as well as ever. * * They have 
an abundance of company, which they doubtless entertain 
with their accustomed facility and frugality. The wind 
which blew D away, was the gale of necessity. He had 
literally "played out" around here, and accepted, so he 
proclaimed, the good offices of a kinsman, who proffered 
him certain inducements to go to Michigan. Reaching 
Chicago, where he was to meet his benefactor, he found 
himself minus the wherewithal to proceed farther, and also 
failed to find the benefactor. But he continued to push on, 
and at last found his Samaritan, in as hopeless a state of im- 
pecuniosity as himself. He is still in Michigan, and is said 



1 82 LIFE OF GFORGE ROBERTSON. 



to be making but poor headway against the tide. I have 
not seen E or F for months. Since the Rebs stopped their 
forays into their part of the country, their own descents into 
this have been fewer and farther between. * * j have 

thus given you a condensed census of , and would 

enlarge it into an epitome of the personal history of the 
friends and acquaintances you left behind, but for fear of 
losing you as a correspondent. The fact is, however, you 
would require a re-naturalization here, so radically have the 
manners and population changed. As an experiment upon 
your patience, I will endeavor to catalogue a few of the more 
familiar characters, then and now. * * * j 

have heard nothing of the P's for a long time. John was 
badly crippled in the rebel army, and afterwards married a 
Mississippi widow, wealthy before the war. Jim has shot 
from the surface, and is probably burrowing somewhere, as 
a provincial pedagogue. B, N. holds his own, in his own 
eccentric way, and with a hunt or a piscatory debauch, now 
and then, is commendably abstemious. C. D. is still an 
attache of the court-house — in fact, he is every where, where 
money is to be made, and is doubtless getting rich. L has 

changed his base, and is now holding forth at the office. 

From indications and known facts, I would infer that his per 
diem consumption of what Dickens calls "conspiracy against 
life," could only be calculated in quarts. Old M has been 
ousted from his habitat, and looks like a desolation. X. Y. 
has tapered off somewhat, but is as intolerable a nuisance as 
ever. L. M. is residing in New York, and Ben is leading a 
life of inelegant leisure here. [At this point the letter runs 
into politics.] W himself was threatened with arrest, and 
fled in dismay. There is no doubt whatever that he would 
have been held for contumacy, I suppose, in daring to 
make a second application to the Grand Panjandaram for the 
coveted permits. By some extraordinary auto da fe he has 
been permitted to return, and reached his home in the coun- 
try a few days ago, where he remains in penitential retire- 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1 83 



nient. H also, was, Cataline like, "set free," and he too 
returns a wiser, if not more loyal, man. I could cite numer- 
ous examples of this arbitrary exercise of power, &c. 



August iith, 1866. 

With the single exception of politics, affairs here, both 
social and commercial, aesthetic and ordinary, are in a state 
■of unpromising stagnation. * * One thing, how- 

ever, is certain, the Big Sandy, and every other projected 
enterprise of any magnitude, in Kentucky, will have to be 
finished, if finished at all, with foreign capital, and operated 
with foreign brains. All is apathy and stupidity here. * 

* * * * I have but little intimacy with the 

disciples of Themis. * * * * W is pro- 

J^essing medicine, at N ; his wife is here. Whether he has 

suspended connubial relations, I am unprepared to say. H. 

G. I have not seen for some time ; he has been here until 

very recently, teaching music, operating the organ at 

church, and imbibing copious lager. ;[< h^ ^ 

Papa's establishment has become quite a popular house of 
■call. Mrs. R, a claimant for cousinship, and a Miss G, a 
marriageable protege, passed sometime there lately. Mrs. R, ■ 
nee I — n, is a rather comely widow of questionable age, and a 
native of Va She struck up an acquaintance with the old 
gentleman, I believe through correspondence, while visiting 

some family in Chicago. Another party of ladies 

from, &c. I hope yet to give you a Christmas greeting. My 
revenue is small, it is true, but I need not assure you, that 
"what so poor a man as Hamlet is, may do, God willing, 
shall not lack." Unless then you have renounced Kentucky 
altogether, pay us the promised visit, before another intes- 
tine war, which quidnunes would have us believe is fearfully 
imminent. I protest I would incontinently inflict a domicil- 
iary visit upon you and }'Ours, were it not, &c. 



1^4 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON, 



NOTICE TAKEN BY THE PRESS OF JUDGE ROB- 
ERTSON'S DECEASE. 

Of the many bar resolutions and obituary notices, the fol- 
lowing are sufficient to show the place that Judge Robertson 
occupied in the minds and hearts of his countrymen : 

GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



1790— 1874. 
George Robertson, for more than half a century a leading and control- 
ling spirit in the politics and jurisprudence of Kentucky, is no more. In 
the long and crowded line of illustrious children, of whom our State is 
justly proud, the public life of not one other, we believe, has extended over 
so long a period as his; and certainly the life of none has been more varied 
in service, more constant in honor. Born in Garrard county in 1790, he 
lived through more than four-score years, and has but now fallen in his 
tracks. The date of his birth is far back in the early times, when Ken- 
tucky was still in the dark and bloody ground; an almost unbroken 
wilderness; that of his death finds her, largely through his own loyal and 
loving efforts, an empire in resources and in promise. The strength and 
abundant vitality, which bore him through so long a course, and enabled 
him to labor so honorably to himself, so profitably to us all. he derived 
Avith his being itself from the sound and sturdy pioneer stock, whence he 
sprang. Nor did he have to purchase the advantages of health and vigor 
by the lack of early culture, which so many of our strong and good men, 
contejnporary with him, had to deplore. For primitive times, his oppor- 
tunities of cultivation were unusual, and he became a scholar. In 1S16 he 
was elected to Congress, being then only twenty- six years old. He was 
twice re-elected, but resigned at the beginning of his third term, without 
taking his seat, in order to devote himself more entirely to his profession. 
Young as he was, he acted quite a prominent part in national politics dur- 
ing the terms of his service. He was chairman of the Committee on 
Territories, and author of the present system of selling public lands. He 
particularly distinguished himself in the angry concroversy over the erec- 
tion of a Territorial government for Arkansas, a proviso in the bill 
prohibiting slavery being stricken out, after a long and doubtful contest, 
only by the casting vote of the Speaker, Mr. Clay. After leaving Con- 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1 85 



gress, Mr. Robertson was often, but vainly, solicited to accept various 
positions of honor and public trust. President Monroe oftered him the 
Governorship of the territory of Arkansas, and the mission to Columbia; 
President Adams appointed him minister to Peru; but all these positions 
he declined. During the animated struggle between the New Court and 
the Old Court parties, the activity of his mind, and his keen interest in 
public aflairs, in a measure foVced him to lay aside for a time his resolu- 
tion to abstain entirely from politics; and he was elected by a spontaneous 
movement of the people to the Kentucky House of Representatives, and 
was chosen Speaker of that body. The public labors of his later years 
were in the department of jurisprudence. In 1829 he was appointed Chief 
Justice of the Court of Appeals, and held that eminently responsible posi- 
tion for fourteen years, when he resigned and again retired to private life. 
During the war he was recalled by the vote of the people to the Supreme 
bench, and, during the inauguration ceremonies of Gov. Leslie, the vener- 
able jurist tendered his verbal resignation, which was afterwards reduced 
to writing and accepted. This was in Semptember, 1872, since which time 
he has resided quietly at his home in Lexington. He never recovered 
from his paralyt'c stroke, and had been almost a constant sufferer up to 
the moment of his death. 

In noticing the characteristics of Judge Robertson's intellect, no one can 
fail to be struck by its precocity, especially when taken in connection with 
the great age which he attained, and his continued activity to the last. 
He ripened early, and he hung long upon the bough, thus furnishing a 
remarkable exception to the general rule in such cases. At his first ap- 
pearance upon the arena of politics, he was already a strong and fully 
developed man. His writings and speeches at that early time seem to be 
as ripe and as free from boyish crudities as the productions of his latter 
years. Perhaps much of this eflect is due to the thoroughness of his legal 
studies, and to the ardor of his deyotion to a sober and methodical profes- 
sion. But it is noticeable that among the dusty folios of the law, he never 
lost his taste for the graces of composition. This is evinced by every 
thing he has left behind him. It is no unusual thing to meet in his legal 
arguments and judicial opinions, llowers of rhetoric, which, in such places, 
almost excite exclamations of surprise. 

The bent of his mind was always toward large views of the questions 
that were brought before him. He seemed to take pleasure, not in avoid- 
ing difficulties and intricacies, but in boldly meeting and solving them. It 
came natural to him to rest every ca-e upon the deepest principles involved 
in it, to hold it firmly on them, and to decide it by them, instead of send- 
ing it oft" on some shallow quibble or mere technicality. If there was 
anything in a case that went down into the depths and the obscure places 
of the law, it was always possible, nay, it was always easy, to get him to 
see and acknowledge the fact, and to guide his researches and reflections 
accordingly. Many of his briefs as counsel, and of his decisions as judge, 



1 86 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



have attracted attention beyond the confines of ihe State. One of his 
most celebrated briefs was in the case of Russell vs. Southard, which he 
gained before the Supreme Court of the United States. Perhaps the most 
famous of his earlier decisions, was that in the case of Dickev vs. tiie 
Majsville and Lexington Turnpike Road Company. Among his later 
decisions, that in the case of Grisvvold vs. Hepham, in regard to the con- 
stitutionality of the legal-tender act passed by Congress, is the most con- 
spicuous. The doctrines laid down by him were afterwards affirmed by 
the Supreme Court of the United States. 

Judge Robertson was a man of warm and generous impulses, as he 
showed on every occasion of his life. Out of love for his familv, and in 
order that he might do the more for them, he gave up his seat in Congress 
and devoted himself to the law. Had he continued in the field of national 
politics, he would, no doubt, have attained the most e.valted positions; for 
it may well be questioned, justly eminent as he was on the bench, whether 
his peculiar gifts of mind and traits of character did not fit him for a states- 
man rather than a judge, despite his large conscientiousness, and his 
elevated sense of the dignity and sanctity of his oliice as judge. His strong 
feelings, to some extent, controlled him, and when he had become thor- 
oughly convinced that one party was the victim of fraud or injustice, he 
argued for him almost with the zeal of an advocate. He was an ardent 
Whig, and the enthusiastic and unfailing friend of Henry Clay, bv whom 
he stood staunchly throughout all of that statesman's long career, and over 
whose remains he pronounced an oration of mournful regret and ten- 
derness. 

His signal devotion to duty can have no clearer or more more touching 
illustration than in the circumstances of his first attack. On the nicrht be- 
fore the morning on which he suffered paralysis, a young relati\e occupied 
the same room witt. him, as was customary, in order to watch over the 
hard-working old man. In the morning the judge arose very earlv, and 
began his accustomed work. He sat down to the table to write out an 
opinion in some decided case. His stroke, if such it may be called, was 
not sudden, but astonishingly gradual. His eyesight began to grow diin 
and he called out to his relative that such was the fact; but he refused, at 
the remonstrance of tiie latter, to give up his work. He continued to work 
on till his failing eyes could no longer guide his hand, and the written lines 
growing shorter and shorter, narrowed to a point; the strokes of his pen 
grew lighter, Llimmer, illegible, and he could do no more. He insisted 
ever\ then, however, that only his eyes were at fault, that his mental facul- 
ties were still perfectly sound, as was no doubt the truth, and begged that 
he might be carried to the court-room to take part in the decision of cases- 
so he fell at his post, and literally with his harness on— a pure patriot, an 
able, upright jurist, a noble man. He is no longer with us, for whose good 
his strength, his life were spent, but his name will live long in the State he 
loved and served. His labor was enduring — it will not perish. He has 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 187 



done more for Kentucky jurisprudence, more to give it form within the 
State and fame abroad, than any other one judge — perhaps than all other 
judges together, that have ever sat in the Court of Appeals. Possibly his 
mere words may die, and his opinions, as such, may cease to be cited; pos- 
sibly the day may come when his name will be spoken no more, but the 
principles he so largely helped to establish, must continue to exert their 
influence on the jurisprudence of our State, for many years vet to come. 
Happy, indeed, was he in his destiny; few men have been more blessed m 
the fruitfulness of their work, or the richness of their remuneration. 

Six years ago, just before he was stricken down by paralysis, he re- 
marked, in conversation with a friend, that the longer he lived the more 
diffident he became of his own ability, and the correctness of iiis opinions 
He explained his meaning by the illustration of a man doomed, at first, to 
live in the bottom of a well — his horizon is circumscribed, and yet he im- 
agines he sees all there is of it; but as he gradually climbs up, the boundary 
of his horizon is expanded, and he then understands how much is to be 
learned. He then feels as Sir Isaac Newton declares — like he was stand- 
ing on the shore, pickmg up an occasional pebble now and then, while the 
great ocean of truth lay all unexplored before him. He had, he remarked 
on the same occasion, been accused of making law; but he held that the 
common law was, to a certain extent, a progressive science; not that its 
principles changed, but expanded so as to embrace the change of circum- 
stances. 

Judge Robertson was long the only survivor of the Congress that passed 
the Missouri compromise measures in 1S20. He had indeed come down 
to us from a former generation; and the men who practiced before him, 
during the last years of his official life, were the sons of contemporaries, 
nearly every one of whom have passed away. The venerable Thomas A. 
Marshall, of this city, was one of the last representatives of the stirring 
tim.es, which first brought the men of the last generation into prominence 
— he being four years younger than Judge Robertson. 

The announcement of the death of this able jurist, comes like wailino- 
over the State. His professional course was marked by high integrity of 
purpose; and while presiding as Judge of the Appellate Court, he enjoved 
to an eminent degree, the confidence of the bar and of the public. Of him 
it can be truly said that he died full of years and of honors. Be his own 
motto his epitaph: 

A^o/i sibi sed patriae. 

The following are the particulars of his last hours and death, as o-iven in 

a special dispatch to the Coitrier-Journah dated at Lexington the i6th: 

"Judge George H. Robertson died at precisely 10 o'clock to-night, after 
suffering intensely from 4 o'clock this morning. He was taken with cramp 
last Monday, and brought very low, but was not thought to be dying until 
to-day. Since this morning his agony was so intense that morphine was 



1 38 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



administered, but failed to take eftect, as he threw it up, and he continued 
to sink rapidly. Rev. Mr. Dinwiddle, his former pastor, whose church 
(the First Presbyterian) he joined about two years ago, happened to be 
passing through town, and called to see him, this morning. He was with 
him until ii o'clock. Judge R. e.N;pressed himself willing and ready to die, 
and said he hoped to meet his pastor in a better world. He retained con- 
sciousness up to about 9 o'clock to-night, when he became speechless. 
However, upon his daughter-in-law asking him if he knew her, although 
he could not articulate, he pressed her hand. He has taken great interest 
in religious concerns for some years past, and last night asked that " Rock 
of Ages" should be sung for him. He died in his chair, where he had 
lived since his stroke of paralysis two are three years ago, and looked very 
little emaciated after death. His body will be kept, according to his re- 
quest, for some days, probably a week, before burial." 



JUDGE GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

On the night of the i6th of May, in the city of Lexrngton, surrounded 
by family and friends, peacefully passed away the soul of George Robert- 
son, a name so indissolubly linked with the history of his country that, 
without the record of his life, it would be incomplete. 

The hand of death was not laid upon him unexpectedly. His great age, 
and a stroke of paralysis visited upon him two years before his death, pre- 
pared him for approaching dissolution. And yet the going out of that 
light that had been so long shining as a beacon in the world of intellect, 
startled us, though we saw the trembling, fitful flash of the expiring flame, 
and watched its feeble eftbrts to survive. 

George Robertson, more familiar to us as Judge Robertson, of the Ken- 
tucky Court of Appeals, was born in 1790, in what is now known as 
Garrard county, then a part of Mercer. He inherited a robust constitu- 
tion, which was never impaired by the indulgences too common to the 
youHi of these days. At the age of eighteen he commenced the study of the 
law at Lancaster, in the office of Martin D. Hardin. That he was singu- 
larlv fitted for the profession which he selected, his after life gave the most 
convincing proof. 

In 1809 he married Miss Eleanor, then only sixteen years of age, daugh- 
ter of Dr. Bainbridge, of Lancaster. The young couple had many things 
to contend with, but with brave hearts they fought the battle with the 
world, and triumphed. The promising talents of the young lawyer soon 
obtained a recognition of the most flattering character. In 1S16, though 
only in his twenty-sixth year, he was elected to Congress, and again in 
181S and 1820. He did not serve out his last term, however, but resigned 
before taking his seat. During his Congressional career he distinguished 
himself in debate upon some of the most important questions that at that 
time occupied the public mind, and left the National Legislature with a 
reputation second only to that of Henry Clay. But a more important 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1 89 



duty than settling the status of territories required his presence at home. 
At that time the great struggle for constitutional government was going 
on in his own State, and into that struggle he threw himself with all the 
ardor of his impetuous manhood, and brought to bear in defense of the 
constitution all the powers of his great intellect and persuasive oratory. 

He was elected in 1822 to represent his county (Garrard) in the State 
Legislature, and continued to represent her from that time until 1S26 — 
during the most exciting period in tiie earlv historv of the State. 

He constantly refused positions of public trust at the hands of the Gov- 
ernment, preferring to remain at home in the practice of his profession, 
and advancing the interests of his people. In 182S he was appointed Sec- 
retary of State b}' Governor Metcalfe, and a few months later of the same 
year, was appointed to the Appellate Bench. Subsequently he received 
the commission of Chief Justice, which position he held until 1S43, when 
he resigned. Having removed to the county of Fayette, he was elected 
a Representative to the State Legislature in 1S51, and was at that session 
chosen Speaker of the House by acclamation. 

1'he war coming on found him a consistent advocate of Union, and an 
unflinching opponent of Secession. Yet he was moderate in the expres- 
sion of his opinion, and was rarely to be found on the side of the 
extremist. In 1S64 he was again elected to the Appellate Bench by an 
almost unanimous uprising of the people. Hon. Alvin Duvall had re- 
ceived the nomination of the party, but it becoming known some days 
before the election that Gen. Burbridge and his bayonets would prevent 
the casting of any votes for Duvall, the people, to avoid trouble, nominated 
Judge George Robertson, and triumphantly elected him, such was the rev- 
erence the people had for his virtue, and their belief in his incorruptible 
integrity. 

Judge Robertson retaijied the position of Chief Justice of the Appellate 
Court until 187 1. At the inauguration of Governor Leslie he, in a 
short and painfully impressive speech, and with halting tones, ten- 
dered his resignation, after having adminisistered the oath of office to the 
Governor. 

Inunediately after this solemn act, by which the venerable Kidge severed 
as it were, his active connection with the world, a committee appointed 
by the Court of Appeals drew up a memorial as a tribute to the life and 
public services of the great Chief Justice. Says the report: "As he put 
olT his robes of office and pronounced his heartfelt benediction on his be- 
loved countrymen, we beheld the representative of a race of intellectual 
giants. It was allotted him, in the providence of God, to survive them all, 
with the solitary exception of his distinguished and venerable compeer, 
Joseph R. Underwood. Though enfeebled by age, and wasted by disease, 
his mind seeined to be active and \igorous as e\er. Having finished his 
course and won for himself the plaudit, ' Well done thou good and faithful 
servant,' he stepped down into private life with the calm dignity of the 
veteran patriot " 



ipO LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



The immediate cause no doubt of his determination to resign his posi- 
tion as Chief Justice was, the physical incapacity to discharge its duties, 
having, in the summer of 1S71, been struck with paralysis. 

For sometime before his death he became completely helpless, but the 
surest evidence of the fast approaching end. was a loss of that intellectual 
vigor that had distinguished him above all men with whom he had to cope, 
either in the Senate or the forum. Recognizing the approach of that day 
when he should appear before his Maker, Judge Robertson took great 
interest in spiritual matters for some time before his death, and frequently 
during his illness solicited the visits ot favorite clergymen, whom he de- 
sired should pray with him. He was conscious to the last, and died with 
faith in his Redeemer, and a trusting belief in his salvation. 

Judge Robertson was a man of remarkable native talent, an untiring 
student, and possessed with a singular power of convincing men. In every 
department of effort in which he was called to serve, he distinguished him- 
self As a member of Congress he was remarkable for his ability and 
mastery of the details of legislation. But as a lawyer he far outshone all 
his contemporaries. Jt was in this profession that he made for himself an 
enduring fame. While Chief Justice of Kentucky he rendered decisions 
that have no superior in the history of jurisprudence, and are quoted as 
authority wherever the English language is spoken 

To a peculiar aptitude for research and an unwearying industry, he 
united a mental intrepidity that led him, whenever in his judgment he saw 
proper, to disregard dusty precedents, and with the unfailing and unalter- 
able principles of truth and justice to guide him, to delve into the mysteries 
of the legal science, grapple with complex problems, and evolve theories 
of jurisprudence remarkable for their force and brilliancy. His great ana- 
lytical powers, fine perceptive faculties, and breadth of view, ena'iied him 
to conquer ditliculties that would have been insurmountable to less able 
men. But amid all the technicalities of his profession, and in spite of his 
years of groping among the dusty tomes of law, he preserved his love for 
the flowers ot rhetoric, and in some of his decisions are to be found pas- 
sages that startle the reader by their beauty of expression. 

The Stale of Kentucky was justly proud of her distinguished son. In 
his death she has suffered a severe, we will not say, an irreparable loss. 
He contributed to her fame, and to her judiciary he added a lustre that at- 
tracted the attention of the world. She will honor his name; the nation 
will honor it, and when the student of her history turns its leaves in after 
j-ears, he will find no name more deserving of enduring memory than that 
of Judge George Robertson. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. I9I 



REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE LEXINGTON BAR 

Judge Hunt having taken his seat, the report of the Cominittee was read 
by Mr. Kinkead, as tbllovvs: 

report: 

The members of the Lexington Bar have appointed us to express their 
sentiments of respect on the occasion of the death of George Robertson 
who died at his residence, in this city, on Saturday, the i6th of May, 187^, 
at lo o'clock p. M. 

He who for so long a time has been our head and chief has fallen at last 
and it is becoming in us to manifest our reverence for his worth. His long 
list of services, beginning with the early years of our Commonwealth, and 
reaching wdon almost to the present, passes before our minds; and on a 
fitting occasion and by eloquent lips, these shall be recounted in our hear- 
ing to his countrymen. Standing now in the presence of the dead, with 
the opening heavens above us, it seems almo :t out of place to look back to 
earth and to earthly objects and earthly honors; in the presence of immor- 
tality to turn to the mortal and perishing scenes around us. And yet this 
earth of ours is so allied to heaven; this mortal is so linked with immor- 
tality; those of us who remain are so united with those who have gone; 
the deeds of this world cast their shadows so distinctly on the world be- 
yond, we unconsciously acknowledge that those only are worthy of a 
crown who by their lives have exalted virtue and made her lovely, and 
who, amid the passions and temptations by which they are surrounded, 
have kept their garments unde.*ile,l. 

It was said of an eminent man of old that he had done iliings worthy to 
be written; that he had written things worthy to be read; and by bk li<e 
had contributed to the welfare of the Rt^pubiic an J the happiness of man- 
kind. He on whom this transcendent eulogy can be pronounced with 
even partial truth, is entitled to the gratitude of his race. During the 
present generation, within the broad limits of the Commonwealth, has 
there died a man over whom it might more truthfully be said, than George 
Robertson.? 

The temptation is great, the materials are abundant, but this is not the 
time or place to discourse of e\en the outlines of the life of this distin- 
guished man His early days of poverty and hard labor— his lack of that 
early education and discipline, which, while it did not hinder him from 
rising rapidly to a seat among the highest, by the force of his natural intel- 
lect, yet shows itself in all his after life— the conservative character of his 
mmd, which led him to throw himself on several trying occasions at differ- 
ent and distant periods— in youth, in full manhood, and in old age— on the 
side of law and order and stable government, his great legal and constitu- 
tional learning in which, for more than half a century, he had occupied a 
front seat with his associates, and which only needed a broader and more 
conspicuous theater, with its controlling and stimulating conflicts, to have 



192 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



made liis reputation coextensive Avith our language; his ample head; his 
firm mouth indicating a strong will and unbounded confidence in his pow- 
ers; sometimes leading him too far; his exquisite and subtle intellect 
sometimes deceiving itself: all this must be dwelt on to make their proper 
impression and do justice to so remarkable a mail. Other men may 
have had excellencies which he did not have; other men may have 
been free of faults which he had; but take hnn as he was, with all his 
faults and all his virtues; with his intellectual strength and his intellectual 
weakness, Kentucky has produced from her soil, distinguished as many of 
of them have been in every department of life, no son whose name she 
will inscribe higher in her list of worthies 

All then, that remains to us is to resolve that in the death of the Hon. 
George Robertson, this bar feels the loss of one of Us most distinguished 
members, and one of its most pleasant associates; the State one of its 
most valuable citizens and friends; that from a sense of duty to the pro- 
fession, of which h; was an ornament, of gratitude for his services to the 
Commonwealth, as well as to satisfy our own private feelings, \Ve bear our 
testimony to his great ability, to his extensive learning in the connnon law 
as in equity and constitutional law, and to his domestic, no less than to his 
public virtues. 



MISCELLANEOUS EXTRACTS 

FROM THE WRITINGS OF JUDGE ROBERTSON, SHOWING HIS OPIN- 
IONS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS. 

GRIEF, INDULGENCE OF. 

That is a false and pernicious dignity which chills ihe warm emotions 
of the heart, or hushes the soft accents of nature's voice. Achilles was 
never so attractively interesting as when agonizing in the dust for the 
death of Patroclus; nor did the aged Priam ever appear so amiable, as 
when, with trembling frame and streaming eyes, he begged the lifeless 
body of his son Hector. These were nature's doings, and among her 
proudest achievements; exhibiting, in the one case, the most impetuous of 
heroes, tamed and subdued by the tenderness of a holy friendship, and, in 
the other, the majesty of a King mildly mingled with the tenderness of a 
kind father. You remember the stern n.nd towering; Pvrrhus — beins re- 
buked for the unstoical weakness of shedding tears for the death of his 
wife, and urged to assume the aspect of a Philosopher unmoved, he ex- 
claimed — "Oh, Philosophy! yesterday thou commandest me to love my 
wife — to-day thou forbiddest me to lament for herl" And being told that 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1 93 



tears could not restore her, he replied — "Alas! that reflection only makes 
them flow faster." 

The reasonable indulgence of the aftections and emotions of the heart is 
not only happying but meliorating, and is one of natures expedients for 
civilizing mankind, and saving them from selfishness and vice. The most 
wise and honored should always act as rational men, and never rebe 1 
against Heaven, or commit treason against nature, by attempting to de- 
stroy or to conceal those emotions which belong to the wisest and best of 
men, for the wisest and best of ends. Let them then be enjoyed and acted 
out in a becoming manner by the most exalted of our race, as long as they 
wish to be considered as men. Such a course secures the intellectual Sun 
from eclipse, disrobes knowledge of the cold and mystic cloud of pride and 
hypocrisy, and presents H in all the simplicity and radiance of its native 
grace and intrinsic loveliness. He who never seems to feel, either never 
feels at all, or as man ought to feel; and others will never feel much aft'ec- 
tion or respect for him. But in the tender sympathies of pure hearts, there 
is "a joy unspeakable and full of glory" — and remember, 

"The path of sorrow, and that path alone, 
Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown." 



LITERARY FAME. 

The classical reader remembers that, when almost all the Greeks, cap- 
tured witli Nicias at Syracuse, had died in dungeons, a remnant of the 
survivors saved themselves by the recitation of beautiful extracts from 
Euripides. How potent was the shadowed genius of the immortal Athe- 
nian, when it alone melted the icy hearts that nothing else could touch, 
and broke the captive's chains, which justice, and prayers, and tears, had 
in vain tried to unloose? And hence "the glory of Euripides had all 
Greece for a monument." He too was elevated br the lisrht of other 
minds. It is said that he acquired a sublime inspiration whenever he read 
Homer — whose Iliad and whose Odyssey — the one exhibiting the fatality 
of strife among leading men— the other portraying the efficacy of perse- 
verance—have stamped his name on the roll of fame in letters of sunshine, 
that will never fade away. No memorial tells where Troy once stood — 
Delphi is now mute— Hie thunder of Olympus is hushed, and Apollo's lyre 
no longer echoes along the banks of the Peneus — but the fame of Homer 
still travels with the stars. 



TIME AND CHANGE. 

Time builds on the ruins itself has made. It destroys to renew, and 
desolates to improve. A wise and benevolent Providence has thus marked 
its progress in tlie moral, as well as in the physical world. The tide which 
has borne past generations to the ocean of eternity, is hastening to the 
same doom the living mass now gliding downward to that shoreless and 
12 



t94 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



unfathomed reservoir. But whilst the current, in its onward flow, sweeps 
away all that should perish, like the Nile, it refreshes every desert, and 
fructifies every wild through which it rolls; and, fertilizing one land with 
the spoils of another, it deposits in a succeeding age the best seeds matured 
by the toil of ages gone before. Asia has thus been made tributary to 
Africa and to the younger Europe, ancient to modern times, and the mid- 
dle ages to the more hallowed days in which we ourselves live. One 
generation dies that another may live to take its place. The desolation of 
one country has been (he renovation of another — the downfall of one sys- 
tem has been the ultimate establishment of a better — and the ruin of 
nations has been the birth or regeneration of others, both wiser and hap- 
pier. The stream of moral light, with a western destinati n from the 
beginning, has, in all its meander ings, increased its volume, until, swollen 
bv the contributions, and enriched by the gleamings of ages, it has poured 
its flood on the cis-atlantic world. 



ENGLAND. 

The fast anchored Isle — the natal land of our fathers, and the mother o 
our common law — has done much for mankind. But she too has had her 
scenes of civil strife and of blood — her Wakefield, her Smithfield, and her 
Bosworthfield; she has had her Tudors, and her Stuarts, her JeftVeys, her 
Bonner, and her Cromwell, as well as her Sydney, her Cranmer, and her 
Hampden; and, after ages of reformation in Church and State, her aris- 
tocracy still governs, her Hierarchy still prevails, and the harp of Erin 
hangs tuneless and sad on the leafless bough of her blasted oak. 

The British constitution lacks the soul of a fundamental law. It has no 
other political guaranty or principle of vitality than the pleasure of King, 
Lords and Commons, in Parliament assembled. An act of Parliament 
inconsistent with the constitution, is nevertheless the supreme law, and, in 
the language of Mr. Hallam, the utmost that can be said of it is that it is 
— "a novelty of much importance, tending to endanger the established 
laws." The constitution of England, venerable as it is, can be found only 
in the statutes and political history of that distinguished Isle. Such a gov- 
ernment could not stand in such a country as ours, or in any country 
where there is an approximation towards practical equality in the rights 
and the condition of the people. And, though in England, the inherent 
imbecility of which we are speaking has been hitherto, in some measure, 
supplied by artificial expedients, yet, if her institutions shall become much 
more popular in their texture, her constitution must become the supreme 
law, and its practical supremacy must be secured by other guaranties than 
any now provided, or, otherwise, dissolution must be inevitable. A landed 
aristocracy, the stock in an irredeemable national debt — the rival interests 
of the crown, and nobility, and hierarchy, and commonality, cannot alwavs 
preserve a safe and stable equilibrium. The spirit of this age will, if it go 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1 95 

on, require other and more comprehensive expedients. Liberalism and 
rationalism are abroad in the world; and all institutions of men must, 
sooner or later, feel and acknowledge their plastic influence. 



HENRY CLAY. 

In this sacred and august presence of the illustrious dead, were an eulo- 
gistic speech befitting the occasion, it could not be made by me. I could 
not thus speak over the dead body of HENRY CLAY. Kentucky ex- 
pects not me, nor any other of her sons, to speak his eulogy now, if ever. 
She would leave that grateful task to other States, and to other times. 
His name needs not our panegyric. The carver of his own fortune — -the 
founder of his own name — with his own hands he has built his own mon- 
ument, and with his own tongue and his own pen, he has stereotyped his 
autobiography. With hopeful trust his maternal Commonwealth con- 
signs his fame to the justice of history, and to the judgment of ages to 
come. His ashes he bequeathed to her, and they will rest in her bosom 
until the judgment day; his fame will descend — as the common heritage of 
his country — to every citizen of that Union, of which he was thrice the 
triumphant champion, and whose genius and value are so beautifully illus- 
trated by his life. 



THE REORGANIZING ACT. 

He never sought office, he never shrank from duty; and shall his coun- 
try give him up to his and her enemies.? Let such folly never mark her 
counsels — let such ingratitude never sully her escutcheon. He stands in 
the breach which ambition has made in the constitution; and whenever he 
falls a victim to your rapacity, his country's cause and his country's 
welfare will tall with him. Whenever he is immolated to satiate your 
vengeance, the incense which ascends from the altar of his sacrifice will 
be mingled with the smoke of a consumed constitution. Around his des- 
tiny, in this crisis, that of the constitution is indissolubly entwined. He 
stands on the last rampart which protects the constitution from your Val- 
dai assaults. If 30U can strike him down and pass this barrier, you at once 
enter the citadel and give it up to violence. Your will is then the consti- 
tution. At such a catastrophe, the patriot might indeed exclaim. "O 
tempora, O mores!" And then it would be but right and natural for a 
Boyle, like Scipio Africanus, in the fervor of a holy resentment, to be- 
queath his curses to the ungrateful country which he had so faithfully 
served and so long illustrated, and his ashes, to strangers, in the memo- 
rable epitaph, "O, ungrateful corN'TRY! thou shalt not have 
Mv bones!" But he will never be driven to this sad extremity. Ken- 
tucky will not be reproached with the ungrateful neglect of a Bellisarius, 
or the exile of an Aristides. Boyle and the constitution will hold out to 
the last. 



196 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



MILITARY CHIEFTAINS. 

Military renown has been fatal to liberty. Washington was "a military 
chier" — But there has been only one Washington. The name of our dead 
Washington is worth more to us than all the living Washington's in the 
world. It was not his victories in the field, but his victory over himself, 
that lifted Washington above all other men. 



DEMAGOGUES. 

His public life illustrates the diflerence between the statesman and the 
politician — between the enlightened patriot who goes for the Avelfare and 
honor of his country, in defiance of all considerations of personal ease or 
aggrandizement, and the selfish demagogue, who, always feeling the peo- 
ples' pulse or looking at the weathercock of the popular breath, counts, as 
the chief good on earth, his own exaltation, by any means, to some office 
or trust which he is not qualified to fill with honor to himself, or advantage 
to the i^ublic. 



She too had her demagogues, and the "Ala/'esiy of the Roman feopleP 
was their watchword. And though she had her Fabricius, her Regulus, 
her Cato, her Cicero — she had also her Clodius, and her Sylla, and her 
Czesars, honored in their day as the friends of the people; and whether 
Marius or Sylla, Citsar or Pompey prevailed, the victory was in the name 
of libertv, the Republic was honored with a triumph, and a clamor of ap- 
probation echoed from the Forum to the Capitol. Even Augustus Caesar, 
absolute as he was, preserved the forms of a Republic, whilst, by the per- 
version of his vast patronage to his own aggrandizement, he made an 
obsequious and prostituted Senate the Registers of his will, and, in the 
name of liberty, fastened a heavy yoke forever on an applauding populace. 



A demagogue is a sycophantic parasite — a servile tool — a slave at the 
feet of power. And, though the object of his idolatry is not a titled king, 
yet he fawns at the feet of a Briaraen monarch, an excitable multitude, on 
whose credulity, vanity and passions, he plays with all the dexterity of an 
artful courtier. A member of the American Congress should be an Amer- 
ican statesman — not, like Burke or Cato, too tenacious of abstract truth 
to do whatever may be practically best; but — enlightened by proper 
knowledoe, and animated by a true American heart, throbbing for his 
whole country — always doing that which he believes to be best for that 
country in all time. Such a public servant is a public lilessing and vyill 
always be honored, even in exile. The opposite character will be a curse 
to any people, and his posthumous doom will be — infamy. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 1 97 



THE PEOPLE HONEST. 

Motives of ambition may prompt you; the people leel none such. It 
may be your interest to do wrong; it is always theirs to do right. This 
is proven by the nature and the very existence of our free institutions, and 
is fortilied by our experience. If these evidences of popular rectitude are 
not satisfactory to you, allow me to add the authority of a great name. 
In Cato's letters you may rind on this subject the following just and en- 
lightened sentiments: 

"It is certain that the people, if left to themselves, do generallv, if not 
always, judge well. They have their five senses in as great perfection as 
have those who would treat them as if they had none. And there is 
oftener found a great genius carrying a pitchfork than carrving a white 
staii: 

"The people have no bias to be knaves. No ambition prompts them; 
they have no rivals for place, no competitors to pull down; they have no 
darling child, pimp, or relation to raise; they have no occasion for dissim- 
ulation or intrigue; they can serve no end by faction; they have no interest 
but the general interest." 



OFFICE SEEKING. 

With Epaminondas, neither seek nor decline, on account of their im- 
puted dignity, places of public trust; and always remember his maxim 
that it is not the station, but the manner in which is is filled, which gives 
dignity and honor. 



LAWS YIELD TO MANNERS. 

Manners have always governed, and will ever govern laws. The historv 
of all nations and ages ot the world echoes the sentiment of Horace, ^uid 
leges sine tnoribus vntnc proficietit'. — and proves beyond question that, 
without proper education and moral principles and habits, all the pomp 
and circumstance of the most magnificent civil and ecclesiastical establisli- 
ments, and all the laws, however numerous and good, which legislative 
wisdom could enact, will be insufficient for preserving order and maintain- 
ing justice among men. Montesque announced a self-evident truth when 
he said, that "the laws of education are the first we receive, and should have 
respect to the principle and spirit of the government we live under." And 
we need not look to China or Confiicius, or to Sparta, or to I.,ycurgus for 
an exemplification — we may find it in every age of the civilized world. 
Plautus and others complained that, at Rome, manners prevailed over the 
laws long before the destruction of the commonwealth, which fell in the 
struggle between Ca;sar and Pompey for the prize of empire; — and it was 
not Cajsar, but the degeneracy of a self-confident, luxurious, and flattered 



198 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



populace that brought tlie Roman Republic to its fatal end. We read in 
Tacitus that ' good manners did more with the Germans than good laws 
in other countries;" and in Lord Bacon, that "it is an old complaint that 
Governments have been too attentive to laws while they have neglected 
the business of education," and gaming, and tippling, and swearing, and 
other fashionable vices, is only a partial illustration of the ancient maxmi 
leges moribus servient — "the laws give way to manners." 



EDUCATION OF THE POOR. 

The rich, it is true, can educate themselves; but the poor, and those in 
moderate circumstances, must depend, in a great measure, for the means 
of information, upon the care and assistance of a parental government. 
Hence, the propriety of legislative interposition and patrona:ge By the 
tu'elar assistance of the State, many a brilliant mind, otherwise destined 
to languish in obscurity, may be brought forth and expanded; many an 
humble individual, other w ise without the means of cultivation and improve- 
ment, may be rendered an ornament and benefactor of mankind, and 
enabled to "pluck from the lofty clift" its deathless laurel." 



CONSTITUTION, SHOULD BE INVIOLATE. 

This Constitution establishes justice and guarantees civil liberty. Its 
power is altogether moral. Its efficiency consists in the public sentiment 
of its inviolability. The soul which animates it is the people's reverence. 
The cement which holds its parts together is the people's virtue and intel- 
ligence. The citizen should hold the Constitution as the Christian does 
the decalogue, sacred and inviolable. It is worthy of his most sincere 
homage, and requires his most resolute and persevering support. Every 
violation will encourage recurrent violations; and thus its value will be 
diminished, and its principles rendered inoperative. As long as the people 
and their functionaries venerate the Constitution in all its parts, justice is 
secure and liberty is safe; the poor man may live in peace, and work with 
the buoyancy of hope and the confidence of security. But only sanction 
or connive at one violation of the Constitution, and it inspires hope and 
confidence no longer. While it exists, its motto is, '•'• nolo me tangere,'' 
(touch me not.) Like virgin purity, once sullied, it loses its chaste odor 
and its charms, and invites its own prostitution. Extinguish only one 
spark of the vestal fire which burns on its altar, and the desecrated flame 
is no longer holy; it degenerates into the common element, and is no more 
sacred or enduring. If one violation be tolerated, another is justified by 
the example; usage ripens into law; and the whole Constittuion is super- 
seded. 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



199 



RIGHTS OF THE MAJORITY. 

The right of the majority to control the minority is derived from nature, 
and is speculatively just and unexceptionable; but not always practically 
proper. In regulating the affairs of society, the majority has an undenia- 
ble right to control the minority, unless when prohibited by the terms of 
the social compact, or the constitution. But, as in a .state of nature the 
weak man has no security against the violence of the strong, nor the minor 
against the unjust dominion of the major party, it becomes necessary that 
government should be established, with such organization as to guarantee 
the equal rights of all Constitutions are made for the weak, not the 
strong; for minorities, not majorities; majorities can protect themselves. 
Hence the necessity of adapting principles which even majorities cannot 
violate. It is not only the sole object, but the essence of a constitution, 
that the stronger man, and the stronger party, shall be interdicted from 
encroachment on the guaranteed rights of the weaker man, and the weaker 
party. By what system of government this great end could be most cer- 
tainly effected, without unnecessarily impairing the liberty of the people 
has been the subject of discussion and experiment for ages; and it has been 
reserved for modern times to discover the secret, which is developed in 
the American constitutions. 

A truly free government is one in which justice predominates over pow- 
er, and right over might. No government is free or equal in which power 
is justice, and might is right, although that power is the authority of num- 
bers, and that might is their physical force. 



CONSTITUTION DEFINED. 

A constitution is a fundamental law, fixing the manner in which the 
public will shall be expressed, and the national authority shall be exercised. 
An unmixed democracy cannot practically exist. Under such a form of 
government, the sovereign power will be assumed by demagogues or 
usurped by force. 

Therefore, for the purpose of wisely enacting and justly administering 
laws, the power of the whole people must be delegated, in some mode, to 
a part. And the organic law, which prescribes the mode of delegation 
and defines the power, and fixes the responsibility of the public agents, is' 
whether written or unwritten, express or implied, the Constitution of the 
State. 



INSTRUCTING REPRESENTATIVES. 

But a pestilent exotic has already taken deep root in the heart of the 
constitution; and, if it live and grow, it will paralyze the organic life of 
that unequalled political structure. Its germ, planted by ambition, has 



200 LIFE OV GEORGE ROBERTSON, 



been watered by charlatanism, and nourished by egotism. The Dema- 
"ocrue feeds on it; and, like the serpent's charm, it fascinates and decoy < 
but too many of multitudes, who do not understand the spirit and object 
of the constitution, and have only an imperfect knowledge of the philoso- 
phy of organized liberty. It is called, "the right of instruction" — a popular 
name, which imports that it is the political duty of the members of each 
branch of Congress to echo, by their votes, the known will of their elect- 
ors. The sole argument in support of this seductive heresy, though to the 
superficial thinker quite specious, will not stand the test of severe scrutiny. 
Its postulate is the assumption that the representative is only the substitute 
of his electoral constituents; and the conclusion is, that he should, there- 
fore, as their agent, represent their will. 

If Congress must speak as the majority feels, all the wonderful machine- 
ry of our National Government, organized for the purpose of regulating the 
motive power of public sentiment, often as explosive as steam, would, in 
time, be rendered powerless, and the transient passions and delusions of 
the majoiitv, instead of their deliberate reason and final judgment, would 
reign unchecked, and soon drive to anarchy, revolution, and ruin. To 
avert such a catastrophe was the object, and is yet the hope, of our funda- 
mental distribution and organization of the power of ruling majorities. 
But the popular doctrine of instructions is a cormorant in the tree of life, 
and if long jiermitted to live and feed, will surely make it fruitless, sapless 
— dead. 

The only constitutional power the electoral constituency can ha\'e, or 
ought to have, over a member, is that inoi'al iufiuence arising from sym- 
pathy, and his responsibility to censorship. They can neither remove nor 
otherwise control him during his term. 



NULLIFICATION. 

Then it is not true, that the States, in their sovereign political capacity 
alone, made the Constitution of the United States, and are the only parties 
to it — it is not true that, und'r that constitution, they retain independent 
and plenary sovereignty — it is not true that, for deciding between them 
and the general government, or any portion of the people and the govern- 
ment, there is "no coinmon judge" provided by themselves in their charter 
of Union — it is indisputably not true, therefore, that "each party has a 
right to judge for itself as to infractions, as well as the mode of redress." 
And, consequently, the first of the resolutions of '9S, the only foothold of 
nullification, or of secession, e\aporates in detonating and pestilent gas. 



OBLIGATION OF A CONTRACT. 

"Obligation," in the Constitution of the United States, means what it 
does elsewhere, and what it imported in coinmon use at the time it was 
inserted. To oljlige is to bind, force, coerce, &c. The derivative, '"obli- 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 20I 

gation," is the binding, forcing power or quality of the thing. It is defined 
by yustinian to be the ligament which binds, and by Pothier to be "z'/w- 
ctilum jurist' or bond, or tie, or chain of right; a moral oliligation or liga- 
ment is defined to be that which binds the conscience, which is the law of 
nature; and a legal obligation, of course, that which binds in or by civil 
law. Tbe obligation of a contract is that wliich induces, compels, or en- 
sues its enforcement. // is not the instrumefit or agent by wliick it is 
coerced, but the right zvhich the obligee has to use coercion, that is the es- 
sence of the obligation. This is either moral or legal, and generally both. 
When there is no mimicipal law, which will compel the performance of 
an engagement, that which induces the performance, is the natural law, 
and is called the moral obligation, which is either internal or external, im- 
perfect or perfect. It is internnl when conscience is the only persuasive 
or coercive povxt r. 

The legal ol :Ii:;ation of Q.\&\-y contract is, therefore, the right or the 
coNTRACTixu I'ARTiES TO coi.ucE EACH OTHER BY LAW, and thereby 
obtain indemnit\ ; arid an}' tiling which weakens, postpones, or im- 
pairs THAT r[(;ht. necessarih' impairs that obligation. 



THE COMMON LAW. 

The common law is an unwritten code of matured reason, of obscur 
origin in times of great antiquity, in the north of Europe and in England 
— the offspring chiefly of the feudal system — the companion and friend of 
civil liberty, strengthened by age, and improved and improving with the 
progress of civilization and of liuman knowledge. It is found only in the 
reports of adjudged cases, in elementary law books, and in the enlightened 
judgment of mankind. It is practical reason, rectified and recognized by 
the experience of ages, and modified by analogies, and by changing cir- 
cumstances. 



EQJ^'ITY. 

Although la«" and equity are generallv contradistinguished, the one from 
the other, yet, when considered with proper precision, they are essentially 
identical in principle. Equity is la-v — otherwise it would be inconsistent 
with that certainty and security in the administration of civil aftairs which 
the supremacy of laws can alone ensure. Equity \% justice too; but it is 
justice in a peculiar and technical sense; not variable, like the changing 
sentiments ot the chancellor or the multitude, but as constant as the fixed 
and rational principles of ci\il right and civil law. In a judicial sense 
tnat cannot be equitable which is inconsistent with the law of the land. 
In the proper sense, a court of equity can neither make nor abrogate any 
rule of law; nor enforce what the law forbids; nor relieve from that which 
the law enjoins; nor decide otherwise than according to the principle and 
spirit of established law; nor interpret a contract or a statute so as lo give 

13 



202 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



to either an import different from that which should be ascribed to it by 
any other judicial tribunal— the intention of the contracting parties is their 
contract, and the intention of the Legislature is the law in every forum, 
and should, in all, be sought and determined according to the same princi- 
ples and tests. In all these particulars, and in every essential respect, 
equity is law, and law is equity; and each, therefore, \% justice according 
to the principles of civil, right and obligation. Equity is but the philosophy 
of law— the spirit and end of the law; and it may therefore be, not inaptly, 
defined to be rectified law administered in England by the lord chancel- 
lor, one of the king's ministers, and by subordinate courts of chancery, and 
in the most of the States of the North American Union by courts of equity> 
in peculiar modes, better adapted to the ends of perfect justice, than the 
technical and imperfect remedies but too strictly adhered to in those ordi- 
nary tribunals called ''common lazv courts.''' 

THE VETO POWER. 

The qualified veto here is practically an absolute veto. No President 
has yet been overruled by the constitutional two-thirds— and no President 
who knows how to exercise power for the sinister purpose of increasing 
his influence, ever will be. Had our fathers of 'S8 foreseen or seriously 
apprehended such a result, they never would have permitted the veto, or 
left it unmuzzled" and omniverous as it may be likely to become. They in- 
tended to bridle it so a,s to keep it in the constitutional track, and their 
journal and debates show that they intended to preserve Congress from 
the vortex of Executive patronage, by declaring its members ineligible to 
any other place of public trust, which could beconferred by the President, 
during their legislative term. Had they persisted in that determination, 
and especially had they extended the ineligibility to the Presidential term, 
thev would h.^ve made representatives- in Congress much more true and 
faithful to their constituents than many of them have been, or will ever be, 
as long as a President can seduce them from their duty to their country by 
the bait of office more profitable or attractive than their seats in legislative 
chairs of uncertain tenure. 



ON THE STUDY OF THE LAW. 

Do not repose in confidence, or presume too much on the elementary 
knowledge you have acquired whilst here. Though you have learned 
much, you are only initiated into the first principles, and prepared for the 
successful study of legal science, the most of which is to you, yet a terr.\ 
INCOGNITA, far beyond the range of your circumscribed horizon. You 
may learn all your lives, and the more you learn the more you will find to 
be learned. To attain the utmost that can be accomplished, it is important 
to make a judicious selection of books, to read them properly, and to make 
a systematic appropriation of all your time. It is not the number, but the 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON, 203 



kind of books, and the manner of reading thein, that will be most useful. 
The most scientific and approved editions of elementary books should be 
studied, carefully compared with the cases to which they refer, and tested, 
when doubtful or anomalous, by principle and analogy — and such text- 
books as Blackstone, Cruise, and Kent, should be periodically reviewed, as 
well as occasionally read. The more important of the adjudged cases 
should be read carefully and compared and collated; and a commonplace 
manuscript, arranged by titles, alphabetically, would be both eminently 
useful, by imprinting new doctrines on the mind, and always of great value 
for occasional application. 

But the habit of intensely thinking and carefully writing on the more 
abstruse doctrines of the law, will be still more useful. Unless we medi- 
tate on what we read, and see, and hear, until we rightly understand it, we 
can never make it our own, or use it properly or efiectually. Reading and 
observation only supply materials for meditation; and intellectual rumina- 
tion is to the mind what mastication and deglutition are to the body. But 
it is intense thinking alone that can digest and assimilate, into a congenial 
and vitalizing essence, the aliment of the inind. Intensity of thought is as 
indispensable to the nutriment of the mind, as the gastric solvent and vas- 
cular labaratory are to animal digestion and life. No man was ever truly 
great or useful, who did not think much and well; and many have been 
practically wise without reading books. Patrick Henry's chief book was 
the volume of nature — but he thought with a peculiar interest and inten- 
sity — and thus, the carver of his own fortune, he became one of nature's 
tallest noblemen. But he did not know much law. To have acquired that 
science it was indispensable that he should have read as well as thought 
much. Proper reading furnishes food; right thinking digests it; a'jd care- 
ful writing and speaking rectify it, and circulate the vital product. Bacon 
has said — '-Much reading makes the full man, much thinking makes the 
correct man, and much writing makes the perfect man." 

CHRISTIANITY. 

In its purity and simplicity — the Christian Religion is the friend and 
companion of civil liberty — its constant companion — its best friend. It 
taught man his true dignity, and his true and equal rights. It elevated 
woman to her just rank in the scale of being; and, even amid the perver- 
sions and prostitutions of a wild superstition, it rescued literature and 
civilization from the ruins of a dark and desolating age. It is not the 
metaphysical, or polemic theology of the schools, nor the infallible "ortho- 
doxy" of sectarian bigotry, nor the false religion of persecution, nor the 
bloody religion of Smithfield, and of the Inquisition— of which we speak; 
but it is that mild, and pure, and holy religion which rebukes intolerance, 
and dispels ignorance, and subdues vice — that heavenly religion which 
beams in the pious mother's eyes, and hallows the accents of the pious 
mother's lips-^that religion which proclaims peace on earth and good wil' 



204 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 

to men, and inspires that love to God and to man which purifies the heart 
and overcomes the world. 

It is the prevalence of this last and brightest hope of man that will estab- 
lish his liberty on the rock of ages. And this it was, pure and unconstrained 
as it came from Hea\en, that the Father of his Country recommended to 
the people of these United States, when, in his valedictory address, he con- 
jured them, by all they held dear, not only to regard religion as the firmest 
prop of their liberty and happiness, but to treat, as a public enemy, him 
who should ever attempt to undermine or to shake it. 



ON AN ELECTIVE JUDICIARY. 

Popular election may not be the best mode of selecting good Judges. 
Admitting the competency of the people to appoint Judges, as well as the 
incumbents of the other departments, when they have proper opportunities 
of doing so, vet the great reason why they should elect the latter does not 
applv to the former. In legislation the constitutional will of the people 
ought to prevail — and, therefore, they should elect their legislative repre- 
sentatives. The same principle applies also to most of the duties of the 
Executive; but a very diflerent one applies to the Judiciary, whose province 
is, not to echo the public sentiment, but to decide the law and uphold jus- 
tice and the Constitution against an opposing torrent of popular feeling. 
To make Judges of the law representatives of public opinion, like the 
makers of the law, is inconsistent and suicidal. And, consequently, what- 
ever will tend to subject the Judiciary to the fluctuating tide of passion or 
of party, is, so far, subversive of the American theory of Constitutional 
liberty and security. Had the Convention only provided for the election 
of Judges for a period of ten or twelve years, and declared against a re- 
election, we would not have opposed the adoption of the new Constitution 
on that ground alone. But, by reducing the term of office to so short a 
period as six years, and allowing re-eligibility, that new scheme of Govern- 
ment holds out a bait which must subject the Judiciary to a capricious 
power, whose will the objects of its creation, and of the Constitution itself, 
require it often to resist and control. 

Who could expect such a Judiciary, by a self-sacrifice, to maintain the 
integrity of the Constitution against an exceedingly popular act of Assem- 
bly.' Who would hope, that before such Judges, the poor and rich, the 
weak and the powerful, the popular and the friendless, the minority and the 
majority, would have an equal chance of stern and impartial justice.? And 
for what, but to protect those who have not the power to protect them- 
selves, is a Republican Constitution ever made? History tells a warning 
tale on this momentous subject, and yet tells not — because the historian 
cannot know — the one hundredth part of the corruptions, the prostitutions, 
and the oppressions, springing from the organization of such a Judiciary 
as that proposed by the late Convention. But it does record, in burning 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 205 

characters, the humiliating fact that, even in our gallant sister State, Mis- 
sissippi, Judges have closed their coiu'ts to avoid giving judgments — Sheriti's 
have resigned to prevent execution — and that, more than once, " Lvncii ' 
law has reigned supreme and unrebuked. 

With a prophetic forecast, as well as historic truth, Thomas Jeflerson. in 
his notes on ^^irginia, denounced such a servile Judiciary as the supple in- 
strument ot" faction and ot" anarchy, and said, in reference to it: — •' Aj/ 
elecit'ne Despotism /v not the Goveriunent zi'e fought for.^^ And echo 
should re\'erberate through the whole valley of the Mississippi, "-Such an 
elective Despotism is not the Govcrmnciit zve fouglit forT 



ON THE FREQLTENCY OF ELECTIONS. 

Whilst it (the Constitution of Kentucky) amuses the unreflecting with 
the semblance of a greatl} augmented electoral power, it provides ibr so 
many and such frequent elections, and of so many officers, high and low? 
at the same time, as to prevent the pure, careful, and prudent exercise o' 
the franchise, throw all nominations and elections virtually into the hands 
of a few busy and selfish managers— degrade tlie practical government into 
a trafficing and corrupting oligarch}- — and, finally, produce among the in- 
dustrious and working classes, a paralyzing indifference about voting, and 
thus operate so as to concentrate the elective power on a class that will 
make a trade of elections. Is this privilege a boon to be struggled for by 
wise men? 



INSANITY. 

/ntcllectuat insanity is not any unsoundness of the reasoning facMlt> . or 
derangement of the mind itself, psychologically or spiritually considered 
nor erroneous reasoning only, nor violent passion, merely as such; but is 
a morbid delusion of the senses, the feelings, or the imagination, which fur- 
nish the material on which the reason acts. As the serene and unchanged 
Sim of heaven reflects, from a deranged atmosphere, unreal and often dis- 
torted images, and even such as the beautiful fata morga?ia in the Bay of 
Naples, -o the mind of man, operating through a diseased brain or the 
false suggestions of unsound senses, presents delusive objects or imaginarv 
facts which have no existence elsewhere than in a diseased brain or morbid 
imagination. The cause is physical, the effect mental. It is delusion — de- 
lusion of a diseased brain or unsound senses. Man is so constituted as to 
be fitly adapted to the material and moral world, around him. He is so 
organized physically, when his organs are all perfect and sound, as to per- 
ceive external objects as they are, and so constituted morally, as to be able, 
by his reason, to deduce true and right conclusions from existino- facts, and 
to conform his acts to the will of God and the laws of his country. And, 
when in this perfect condition of constitutionalliarnionv and adaptation' 
he is, in the legal sense, sane, and is responsible for his conduct, 



206 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



SLAVERY. 

liad this i„t been cast in a land of universal freedom, he never would 
consent thai its vii yin bosom should be soiled by the tread of slavery, or 
its tranquillii ,■ disturbed bv the cry of a slave. Of course, were he a resi- 
dent of California, he would oppose the introduction of slavery there. But 
the people of that country, like the people here, should be left free to reg- 
ulate their own domestic relations in their own Avay; and, if they should 
desire to have slaves, Congress — though in his opinion possessing the 
power to prevent them while in a territorial state of dependence on the 
unlimited legislation of the General Government — would act unwisely, as 
well as vmjustly, to exercise it, and more especially as, in that case, the act> 
being altogether unnecessary, would seem to be wantonly intended for the 
political aggrandisement of one section of the Union, and therefore would 
be the more imgracious and offensi\ e to another section, which, though not 
quite so populous, is at least as intelligent and patriotic 

Slavery in Kentucky is a moral and political evil. The children of slave- 
holders are injured, and manv of them ruinrd b\- it; and it has greatly re- 
duced Kentucky's ratio of political power; for whilst she, the iirst born of 
the old " 13,'' has only ten representatives in Congress, Ohio, younger in 
origin and inferior in jihysical adaptations, has already twenty-one repre- 
sentatives in the same bodv. But the slaves here are so numerous, and 
slavery itself is so intertwined with the social oV personal habits of the free 
population as, in his judgment, to forbid the adoption now of any system 
of emancipation with a rational hope of a consummation either satisfactory 
or beneficial. Before this can be done, the number of slaves must be con- 
siderably diminished, and the people more and more assimilated to the 
non-slaveholding habits and condition. The experiment of non-importa- 
tion will soon decide whether Kentucky is destined long to continue a slave 
State, and will in proper time, we hope, develop public sentiment on that 
subject It is the interest of all — the duty of all — to try that experiment. 
Whatever may be its final results, its operation will be beneficial to al' 
parties — masters and slaves, the pro-slavery party, the emancipation party' 
and the conservative party. 



But heedlessly agitate them on the stultifying topic of slavei'y, and there 
will be neither peace nor safety — here, nor throughout this entire Union. 
Many aspiring politicians, of selfish ambition, and a still larger number of 
fanatics, on one side of "Mason's and Dixon's line." are striving to consol- 
idate the non-slaveholding States on free soilism as the paramount test of 
National party — and there are but too many Hotspur's and ultra pro- 
slavery men on the other and numerically weaker side of the line, who 
rashly plav into the hands of these " North Men," and encourage an issue 
which, if ever fully made up, must result in the political subjugation of the 
South, or a disruption of the Union. It is the interest of Kentucky to pre- 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 20/ 



vent that fearful issue; and she can avert it only by abstaining from slave 
agitation and remaining self-poised, firm and moderate. 



LAWYERS— QUALIFICATIOInS OF. 

In discharging the various duties, incident to your profession, you will 
find use for all human knowledge and moral power. Sallust doubted 
whether a higher order of talents and attainments was not necessary to 
make a good historian than an able General. But can there be any doubt 
that the beau idea i of an eminent lawyer requires more knowledge and 
moral power, than what might be sufficient to make an able General? 
Prudence, sagacity, decision, courage — are the chief attributes of able Gen- 
eralship. The able and honest lawyer must have these, and more. He 
must have a profound knowledge of law, an acquaintance with general 
science and polite literature — integrity of principle and character, and a 
peculiar faculty of speech. Nothing is more difficult or interesting, or re- 
quires more variety of attainments, or greater compass or power of inind 
than a forensic argument, in a great and difficult cause, addressed to the 
reason, the hearts, and the passions of men. in behalf of truth obscured by 
sophistrv, justice ojipressed by power, or innocence persecuted by malice 
and falsehood. In such a cause, all that is most good and great in moral 
power may be necessary and will ever be most useful. 

A man of the ordinary grade of intellect may, bv assiduity, persever- 
ance, and fidelity, become a respectal)le lawyer, and '\i;'ei alons^''^ in his 
profession. But talents, the most exalted — knowledge, most profound and 
vaiious; industry, most regular; honor, most chivalrous; and integrity, 
most pure and intlt-xiblc, must all lie coniljined in him who is eminently 
distinguished for forensic ability. 

Talents, however bright — knowledge, however great — will be unavailing 
or pernicious, without habitual industry, systematic prudence, and perfect 
honor. What Johnson said of Savage, and Butler of Sheridan, is univer- 
sally true — "Those who, in confidence of superior capacities, disregard the 
common maxims of life, will be reminded that nothing will supply the 
want of prudence, and that negligence and irregularity long continued, 
will make knowledge useless; wit, ridiculous; and genius contemptible." 
No lawyer, who neglects that maxim, can be true to his clients, to his own 
fame, or to the dignity of his profession. And here we deem it not inap- 
propriate to invite your attention to the importance of a peculiar propriety 
in personal and prolessional deportment; and also, to the necessity of, 
what may be termed, forensic ethics. 

ist. A law\er should be a gentleman in his principles, his habits, and 
his deportment; in fine, a gentleman in the sterling import of the term — 
else he brings degiadation on himself, and helps to reflect discedit on the 
profession. And to be a gentleman in the true and perfect sense, is to 1 e 
what is too rare — a man of sound principles, scrupulous honor, becoming 



2o8 LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 



modesty, active benevolence, habitual morality, and rational, just, and 
polite deportment. 

2d. In his intercourse with his clients, he should be candid, respectful, 
patient, liberal, and iust. He should never advise a suit unless it is the 
interest of his client to "go to law." If the case be frivolous, or the right 
dcubttul, he should advise forbearance or compromise. He should never 
encourage litigation. When a suit becomes necessary, or is pending, his 
lee should be regulated by the value of his services, and the client's ability 
conveniently to pay. An honest n^an will never barter his conscience, 
nor will an honest lawyer ever speculate on the ignorance, the fears, or 
the passions of his confiding clients. A fakhful lawyer will never deceive 
his client nor neglect his business. It is his duty, and his interest too, to 
deal in perfect candor, and to do, in the preparation of his client's cause, 
all that he ou^ht to do; and that is, all that he can do consistently with 
personal honor or professional propriety. If, in consequence of his negli- 
gence, misdirection, or unskillfulness, his client's claims unjustly or im- 
properly fail, he should indemnify him fully, promptly, and cheerfully. 
He should never attempt success by any other than fair, honorable, and 
le'al means; nor should he advise or connive at the employment of any 
other means by his client. He is not bound by any obligation to the dig- 
nitv of his profession to abandon his client's cause, merely because he may 
discover that he is on the wrong side; for he might be mistaken in his 
opinion, and might do great injustice by turning against his client. And 
also, it is h'is duty, whether in a good or bad cause, on the wrong side or 
the right, to present, in as imposing a manner, as fair argument can ex- 
hibit, the stronger or more plausible points in his client's behalf, without 
expressing an uncandid opinion. In no case should he ever express, as his 
opinion, anv thing but his opinion. To do so would not only be inconsist- 
ent with the propriety of his profession, but would surely impair his influ- 
ence, subtract from his reputation, and render it altogether uncertain when 
he thinks what he says. 

-■d. Towards the court he should be respectful and modest, but firm 
and candid; and he should never endeavor to elude his own responsibility, 
bv attempting to throw it unjustly on the court. The artifice is but too 
common. It is, however, not only disingenious, but discreditable and dis- 
aiivantageous; because it is dishonorable, and tends to disparage the courts 
ol" justice, in which public confidence is indispensable to a satisfactory ad- 
ministration. of the laws. 

4'.h. In his intercourse with his professional brethren, he should be 
courteous, just, and honorable. He should repudiate all dissimulation and 
low cunning, and all those connnon place and humiliating artifices of little 
minds, which constitute chicanery. He should desire only an honorable 
victory; such as may be won by fair means and fair arguments. If he 
biat his antagonist by superior arguments, or superior knowledge, his suc- 
cess is creditable; but if he beat him in cunning, fraud or trickery, he de- 



LIFE OF GEORGE ROBERTSON. 2O9 

grades himself, prostitutes his privileges, and outrages forensic dignity and 
propriety. Such vulgar game is beneath the pride, and revolting to the 
honor of lofty intellect. It is the otlspring of moral infirmity, and is 
almost always, proof of a diminutive mind. 

5th. A lawyer can hardly be both mercenary and just. An inordinate 
appetite for gain, is apt to seek gratification in spoliation, fraud, and op- 
pression, and is generally the companion of a cold and calculating selfish- 
ness, irreconcilable with the most attractive and useful of the personal, 
social, and civic virtues. Avarice is also undignified and unreasonable. 
He, who is not content with a competence for independence and rational 
enjoyment, has a morbid appetite which this world can never satiate — be- 
cause it craves to hoard and not to enjoy. More than a competency is not 
necessary- for happiness, and is but seldom consistent with it. 

" Reason's whole pleasure, all the joy of sense. 
Lie in three words — health, peace, and competence." 

And the Book of books tells us, that it is almost impossible for a very 
rich man to reach, or, if he could reach, to enjoy heaven; because he is 
almost sure to be sordid, and to look on ephemeral, earthly possessions, as 
his summtim honum^ or supreme good. It is almost as difficult for a rich 
man ever to become a great lawyer. There are but few who can be stim- 
ulated by ambition or taste alone, to encounter the toil and vexation, the 
sleepless nights and anxious days which must be the price of forensic 
eminence. And he who desires that his last moments on earth shall be 
gilded with a firm assurance that his children, whom he has pledged as 
hostages to posterity, shall be useful and honorable in their day, should 
not be solicitous to lay up for them, more of this world's goods than bare- 
ly enough to enable them to give to their moral and physical powers 
proper means of employment and development. Why then should we 
court an empty and delusive shadow.' Worse — an ignis fatuus, that too 
often lures from the straight and open path of virtue and happiness.'' for 
we know how few there are, or ever have been, who dedicate their surplus 
wealth to its only useful and proper end — beneficence. 





Line. 


ERRATA 




Pag-e. 


Far. 


Read . 


II 


30 


its subject. 


and its subject. 


97 


31 


activity. 


actively. 


• 9S 


0- 


unquited. 


unrequited. 


104 


31 


and. 


amid. 


104 


■> 
0- 


stood. 


trod. 


105 


9 


of the crucifixion. 


The evidence of the, &c 


iiS 


1 


shadows. 


shallows. 


131 


31 


misanthrop. 


misanthropy. 


137 


II 


opportunities. 


importunities. 


134 


34 


floor. 


door. 


139 


36 


frequent. 


pregnant. 


141 


II 


piiilosophy. 


philology. 


150 


36 


elaborate. 


elevated. 


173 


7 


contunence. 


concurrence. 


174 


30 


obligor. 


obligee. 



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